The Intertexts of ‘Seeing’ and ‘Non-Seeing’ in Schnabel’s Le Scaphandre et le papillon

Abstract

This article examines the complexity of the relationship between ‘seeing’ and ‘non-seeing’ and its connection to a knowledge of the Self in Julian Schnabel’s film Le Scaphandre et le papillon. It is argued that ‘seeing’ is an impediment to an understanding of the visible world, while variations on ‘non-seeing’ enhance knowledge of visibility and Self. In the context of the filmic text, knowledge is associated specifically with the act of retrospectivity in writing and in the mind. This reading of the film as a retrospective and visually veiled event is reinforced and enhanced by reference to the work of two contemporary French writers. Visual impairment is the subject of Hélène Cixous’s autobiographical text Savoir. For Cixous, myopia and its ‘seeing’ are linked to a knowledge that is only attainable retrospectively through nostalgia. The work of Hervé Guibert draws on the philosophical and literary implications of half-sightedness and blindness as gateways to a different expression of knowledge and ‘sight’ that take their inspiration, by contrast, from a ‘continuum’ of invisibility in which ‘non-seeing’ is represented as a continuous seeing in thought.