To Know Me Now

Abstract

This article combines an autoethnography that was part of the author's graduate schoolwork with a `post-script' written six years later. The autoethnography assignment focused on the personal experience of the writer while illuminating social and cultural contexts. The article's first section recounts a conversation in which complex personal, social and political aspects of disability unfold. The dialogue becomes a springboard for examining research about blindness and rehabilitation. It also prompts self-reflection and an inner examination of individual choice as the author struggled to be seen as `more than her vision'. In the second section, the fluid contexts of knowledge and the knower are made explicit as meanings of `choice' and `living' are re-examined. The author considers the apparent contradiction of needing others to see vision loss and to look beyond it. She also considers her own assumptions about how others relate to disability.