Blog 9: Excess and Non-Vision

I am still drawing out the distinctions regarding the excess of the body and blindness, seen through Isobel Armstrong and Nancy Armstrong’s terms. I keep confusing myself because of the distinctions as well as identical critics’ names, so I apologize for the repetitiveness while I work through the arguments.

In Isobel Armstrong’s article, classical models of the aesthetic are not based on bifurcation and erasure but on vision, which denies possibility, as seeing becomes the ultimate assessment of appearance (92-93). Sound, on the other hand, always contains the unsaid, yet also requires another to hear. Sound is the new cognitive space where the signifier’s possibilities are limitless. The mismatch of sound and its signified create need, which is also both a responsibility and a paradox, as the act of sound is an intrusion upon the self (93). The signified is equated with excess.

Nancy Armstrong discusses the logic of discipline in regards to population control; distinctions are made within society of those who are allowed and those who aren’t. She brings in Foucault’s point in which a subclass results from the excess of the dominant body (534). I am interested in the excesses that the two critics mention. For I. Armstrong, excess is equated with the signified and contains the unsaid and therefore has limitless possibilities. I think this is the opposite of her understanding of vision, which lacks possibility. Excess, in N. Armstrong’s terms results when the body cannot contain everything. So to connect the two, excess can essentially be positive or negative, or the infinite and a lack. N. Armstrong argues that excess leads to the subclass of people (who are punished) and I. Armstrong says it opens up possibilities. Vision comes into play as it is the contrast for sound (according to I. Armstrong) and for Mr. Yule in New Grub Street, his vision loss is the result of excess (if glaucoma is seen as an excess of the body). So the distinction here is interesting because vision denies possibility but is also the ultimate assessment of appearance.

To return to I. Armstrong’s discussion of bifurcation and erasure, and of which she maintains are the opposite of vision. She uses sound as the “new cognitive space” that emerges as the source of limitless possibilities. This is a compelling claim: the unsaid and signified which exist within this space are powerful modes of interpretation. However, I think that in addition to sound, blindness occupies this space. In Armstrong’s terms it would mean the complete opposite of the assessment of appearance; a lack (it might be interesting to discuss the Lacanian lack and relate back to gender). Yet, to connect blindness to erasure and bifurcation, if vision is the outside of these modes, then non-vision is within them. Non-vision or blindness, then, has infinite possibilities.

In terms of the texts I am talking about, I want to argue that spaces of non-vision are actually sites of seeing. For example, although Mr. Yule loses his vision, he becomes more insightful and aware. Marian’s vision loss is interesting because she does not actually go blind (like Esther and Mr. Yule) but is made blind by Count Fasco as he keeps her sick and hidden from Laura. However, this act operates in a different way: it is essential to revealing of other important plot aspects. Although Marian cannot see, the reader is made aware of how little control she has. Esther is tricky because her blindness is temporary. I am still working out that argument but am thinking that this connects back to the excess and N. Armstrong’s analysis that Esther’s illness demonstrates that Dickens resists the notion of one character as the container of the entire population. For Esther, then, blindness reveals the impossibility of being able to represent the whole.