Stephen Kuusisto and Petra Kuppers offer this interesting text:
Auto-graphein occurs when the blind man arrives on the sidewalk with pencils forlornly arranged in a cup.
He cannot write. He does not know where to place the “I” of autobiography.
His street performance says he’s merely a self ‘acted upon’—the self arranged alongside the useless instruments of writing.
Therefore the pencils he sells are fetishized. He cannot use them for their intended purpose.
Selling objects he cannot use (objects that, presumably, sighted people might want) the blind man generates a moment of abject exchange.
In this way the blind man escapes charity.
Here.