Volume-XI, Issue-IV, July 2025 |
The Making of the Historical from the Personal: Exploring History from the Biography of Louis Braille Daibaki Mondal, Ph.D. Scholar, Department of History, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India &Assistant Professor, Department of History, Rampurhat College, Birbhum, West Bengal, India |
Received: 23.07.2025 | Accepted: 24.07.2025 | Published Online: 31.07.2025 | Page No: | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.11.issue.04W.111 |
ABSTRACT | ||
The remarkable biography of Louis Braille (1809-1852) by Swapan Mukhopadhyay in Bengali titled "Life of Louis Braille" (2009), serves as a historical testament through the nuanced exploration of the social, cultural and national contexts of its time. This biography is not merely a personal account of Louis Braille's life, but a 43-year documentation of the French history, providing insight into the social psychology of 19th-century France as well as the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities during that era. With its description, Louis Braille’s biography thus plays a crucial role to decipher the flow and changes in the historical discussion of person with disabilities. The documentation and description of the invention of Braille system by Louis Braille (derived from Napoleonic-era military communication codes) vis-à-vis his own personal lived experiences, revolutionized literacy for the persons with visual disabilities, creating a new milestone in the history of education. This supports, historian Ashin Dasgupta’s notes on how literary representations of historical events via biographies offer a unique perspective that complements traditional historical accounts, then historians functioning as mere spectators of events. Using the biographical work by Swapan Mukhopadhyay, in my paper I will discuss how biographies can become literary historical resources, offering a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between individual lives, the broader historical contexts, their key inventions and non-mainstream issues like disabilities. I will thus elaborate and examine biographical narrative in “Life of Louis Braille”, with dual focus on uncovering the socio-political history of France and excavating the social history of individuals with visual disabilities. Keywords: Biography, History, People with blindness, Braille, Education |