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Abstract
Novels of José Saramago are known for postmodernese but his novel, Blindness, can be analyzed better using phenomenological study. In Saramago’s Blindness a sudden blindness becomes an epidemic among the inhabitants of a large, unnamed city. The characters transform the world around them. The work presents the relevance of the senses in the process of relationship and understanding of the world. In this context, the concept of the body of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty as seen in The Phenomenolgy of Perception (2005), The Visible and the Invisible (2007) and The Eye and the Spirit (2004) presents itself as a relevant subject to be considered in the analysis of Blindness. The philosopher deals with the study of essences and says the essence is the perception (Merleau-Ponty 2006). Just as Merleau-Ponty proposes reflections on the essence of being human, in Blindness, with the loss of vision of the characters, there are detailed processes perceptive of the individual to the world and the other. Overlapping of human instincts at the expense of their illusory consciousness is also there. Before the blindness, which defies all scientific knowledge, the characters seemed to live in an automatic world. In Merleau-Ponty’s view, it is the body that perceives and not the awareness. Similarly in Blindness, the blindness forces the characters to change their behaviour and understanding of the world.