Olivia von der Weid

This research will explore the social and political effects of the pandemic on the bodies and subjectivities of visually impaired women, especially those who are members of the Brazilian Movement of Blind and Low Vision Women. By reconstructing the narratives about the unique ways in which the pandemic has expressed itself in their bodies and lives, we seek to map out the intertwining between a) internalized forms of domination; b) impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the experience and subjectivity of blind women in contemporary Brazil; c) modes of existence and escape routes within this cartography, investigating by the activation and sharing of bodily memories and what they inform. The research seeks to describe the collective’s modes of action during the pandemic and develop, in collaboration with the movement’s leadership, devices for transforming subjectivity and creating aesthetic and political meanings rooted in corporality and in the experience of being a visually impaired woman. The turning point for addressing these issues stems from a dialogue with and about the lives and subjectivities of blind women, while at the same time reverberating reflections about other human and non-human corporalities and existences and the novel possibilities of arrangements and conditions for their coexistences.