ITO Asa

This paper aims to clarify characteristics of aesthetic experience of the visually impaired. Aesthetics has long treated them as people with outstanding sense of touch under the strong influence of Molyneux’s problem. As Derrida advocated, sense of touch has played a fundamental role in the tradition of Western metaphysical thought because it can grasp an essence directly without any interference of preconception. This study questions this connection between the visually impaired and sense of touch by conducting fieldwork. The result of interview shows that blind people rather tend to avoid touching objects by hand so as to follow the code of conduct of sighted people. Instead, they like to use another sense modality such as audition or sense of smell. Of course they sometimes rely on sense of touch too, but the way of touching is completely different from what conventional aesthetics has expected to be. This misunderstanding about blind people was strengthened because aesthetics has referred to them only in the limited context and has paid little attention to their real life. This paper argues the possibility of aesthetical approach to handicapped people and evaluates its significance from the viewpoint of disability studies.