Laughing in the Dark: Blind Female Sexuality, Desire and Resistance in Joginder Paul’s Blind

Abstract

The Indian English novel Blind by Joginder Paul presents one of the most intricate portrayals of sexuality in blind women in Indian literature. It is through the character of Roni that the novel subverts the established cultural stereotype of asexuality, helplessness, and vulnerability of blind women. This paper will show that Roni’s narrative creates an empowering counter-narrative of desire experienced by the blind woman that is characterized by laughter, physicality, sexuality, trauma, motherhood, and ultimate reclamation of herself. Using Feminist Disability Studies theory with a focus on the scholarship of Kim Q. Hall and Alison Kafer, Indian feminist theory, and body politics, the paper explores how Roni’s body becomes the locus of exploitation and pleasure, as well as how laughter becomes a form of resistance against attempts to silence her desire. Thus, the paper illustrates that while Blind features a blind female character, it prioritizes her eroticism and political agency, which is a rather unusual phenomenon in mainstream Indian literature and disability stories.