誰是盲人：台灣現代盲人的鑑定、分類與構生

Who Are the Blind? Assessment, Categorization, and the Making Up of the Blind in Modern Taiwan

盲，大概是人類歷史上最早被區辨出來身心障礙類別之一。然而不同時期盲人的判斷與分類方式有著非常大的差異，因此盲人的「本質」也有很大差異。從行動者網絡理論（Actor Network Theory）的觀點來看，盲人置身的網絡不斷改變，因此包括「盲人」在內的所有的行動者其實也都在變化。然而各個時期的盲人又有其相對穩定的存在，本文採取Ian Hacking的「動態唯名論」（dynamic nominalism），作為的行動網絡理論的一個補充，來理解過去百年來台灣盲人的誕生與演變過程。國家制度與物質實作形成現代盲人，而被分類的盲人又透過行動與參與知識生產，反過來改變鑑定方式與分類。「盲人」由個別化定義的盲人，變成不同制度定義的多重存在，再轉變成單一的類別。我們在撰寫某種「人為類別」的歷史時，必須仔細考慮到這些類別的動態建構本質。

“Blindness” is among the first disability categories recognized in human history. Yet are the blind in the past the same as the blind in modern society? What is the history of the blind in Taiwan? This study adopts Hacking’s “dynamic nominalism” as a supplement to Actor Network Theory to explore the transformations in the procedures for assessing and classifying the blind in Taiwan. In the past 120 years, institutional and material practices have “made up” modern blind people, and the categorized blind in turn changed the means of assessing and classifying blindness through their action and participation in the process of knowledge production. The networks in which the blind are situated continuously changin, and so are the actors in these networks. “The blind” as a category has gone through various stages of definitions from individuals, to institutions, and to a modern unified definition by the state and medical experts. Therefore, we should not assume that there is one homogeneous “human kind,” in writing their history.