Research Article | Open Access
“Empathetic Unsettlement”: Decoding the Notion of Other and Victimhood in Planet of the Blind
Dr Dharmapada Jena
Pages: 1860-1863
Abstract
Disability studies, that emerged in the West in the late twentieth century as an identity
based
movement, sets to contest the traditional negative perceptions around various impairments. The
stigmatization of the disabled posited in the “medical model” has been challenged through the
“social” and “cultural” model that draw attention from body to socio cultural conception and
reception of the disabled. Yet, the disabled remain as an O ther, being victimized by the socio political
phenomena and by their own re alization of the same. The paper reads Planet of the
Blind ( through the prism of, what I call, a psychological model that adopts “empathetic
unsettlement” (LaCapra a tool much hailed in trauma studies, for decoding the notion of
victimhood and the o ther identity of Kuusisto, the writer who is visually challenged. The employment
of “empathetic unsettlement,” as a tool will help the medical practitioners and scholars of disability
studies in witnessing and understanding the victim’s position and his/ her trauma through a kind of
“virtual
Keywords
Empathetic Unsettlement, An Other, Victimhood, Psychological Model