X: Ableism within hegemonic literary structures, particularly forms of epistemological centrism (ocularcentrism, phonocentrism).

Y: The most basic tenet of ocularcentrism is the idea that “seeing is believing,” the best way we can know something is by seeing it firsthand. Phonocentrism works slightly differently, prioritizing sound and speech over image and text. Phonocentrism further posits that written text is subpar as a method of acquiring knowledge as it is derived from and tries, but ultimately fails, to replicate speech. For the able-bodied, a person may prefer one method over another, but both are likely to appear valid. Both structures assume that all people interacting with them are both sighted and hearing, having the ability to choose with which sense they experience something. What happens, however, when someone doesn’t have the privilege of sight or hearing? Are those people then unable to know? Does their knowledge become secondary? Must they inherently endorse a kind of centrism? Who benefits from the prioritization of knowledge?\

Z: Looking at structural ableism, deconstruction, and theories of disability I plan to address the inherent ableism of prioritizing the Aristotelian senses, particularly of placing one sense above all others. Deaf poet Meg Day’s collection Last Psalm at Sea Levelabandons musicality for rich tactile and flavorful description. Helen Oyeyemi’s surrealist short fiction found in What is Not Yours is Not Yoursattempts to make sense of arcane knowledge—characters with ideas of the world they can’t explain with sensory experience. Using these texts, I hope to further expose ableist structures in literature and argue against any kind of epistemological centrism that disadvantages or others the reader/viewer (terms which are themselves ableist).

A secondary text I may use is Martin Jay’s “The Rise of Hermeneutics and the Crisis of Ocularcentrism,” an article that argues against the triumph of either the eye or ear as a dominant mode of imagery production.

Jay, Martin. “The Rise of Hermeneutics and the Crisis of Ocularcentrism.” Poetics Today 9, no. 2 (1988): 307-26. doi:10.2307/1772691.