The Blind Man A Phantasmography
The Blind Man: A Phantasmography by Robert R. Desjarlais, published by Fordham University Press in 2019, is a thought-provoking exploration of perception and imagination. This 215-page work delves into the complexities of how we encounter and interpret images, particularly through the lens of a series of photographs taken by the author during his travels in France. Desjarlais reflects on the life of a blind man who begs at a religious site in Paris, prompting a deeper inquiry into the nature of perception and the interplay between reality and imagination.
In this journal-style narrative, Desjarlais embarks on a quest to meet the man depicted in his photographs, leading him to confront the uncertainties of what he sees and remembers. The book intricately weaves text and image, addressing contemporary issues such as the politics of looking, the nature of photographic capture, and the complexities of encounters with others. Through this inquiry, Desjarlais advocates for a “phantasmography,” a conceptual framework that captures the fluidity of fantasy and the multifaceted nature of human experience.
Official synopsis Publisher
The Blind Man: A Phantasmography examines the complicated forces of perception, imagination, and phantasms of encounter in the contemporary world. In considering photographs he took while he was traveling in France, anthropologist and writer Robert Desjarlais reflects on a few pictures that show the features of a man, apparently blind, who begs for money at a religious site in Paris, frequented by tourists. In perceiving this stranger and the images his appearance projects, he begins to imagine what this man’s life is like and how he perceives the world around him.
Written in journal form, the book narrates Desjarlais’s pursuit of the man portrayed in the photographs. He travels to Paris and tries to meet with him. Eventually, Desjarlais becomes unsure as to what he sees, hears, or remembers. Through these interpretive dilemmas he senses the complexities of perception, where all is multiple, shifting, spectral, a surge of phantasms in which the actual and the imagined are endlessly blurred and intertwined. His mind shifts from thinking about photographs and images to being fixed on the visceral force of apparitions. His own vision is affected in a troubling way.
Composed of an intricate weave of text and image, The Blind Man attends to pressing issues in contemporary life: the fraught dimensions of photographic capture; encounters with others and alterity; the politics of looking; media images of violence and abjection; and the nature of fantasy and imaginative construal. Through a wide-ranging inquiry into histories of imagination, Desjarlais inscribes the need for a “phantasmography”–a writing of phantasms, a graphic inscription of the flows and currents of fantasy and fabulation.
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