The pressures of being a ‘tweener’

At home, we’re currently watching the T.V. series ‘Prison Break’. One of the key characters is David ‘tweener’ Apolskis. Caught somewhere in allegiance between the prisoners and the police he never appears quite sure who he should side with to best ensure his future… does he follow his heart and ally himself with the cons? Or take the more pragmatic step of cooperating with the police?

Having just passed my PhD viva, but without any immediately secure research destination, I know a little bit how he feels. During my Masters and PhD, I did everything I could to ensure that there would be research work waiting for me when I finished. However, despite volunteering, lecturing, tutoring, supervising and publishing my way through the last seven years, I’ve come out virtually empty handed.

In truth, I’m not surprised. There are few academic departments in the UK (world) working with Deaf studies at anything higher than undergrad level… so it’s largely a case of dead-man’s-shoes. However, even when there are dead men, the shoes are taken away by recruitment freezes. Add to this the distinct possibility of a drop in equality and social science funding brought about by a conservative win at the elections next year, and the complete failure of academia in general to perceive the enormous importance of Deaf Studies as a test bed for re-writing theory on what constitutes ‘valid humanity’… future pickings look thin.

However, I can’t stray too far. If I do, I’ll never publish, never win a grant, never get back in. With my heart in academia but no option but to find work elsewhere, I’ve become a ‘tweener’.

My working life has become a strange combination of two different worlds. Four days a week (approx) I work as an administrator and computer help-desker for the ILRT at the University of Bristol. Two days a week I spend working for the Centre for Deaf Studies as a temporary researcher. Work to write academic papers, grant proposals, make contact with potential funding sources and research collaborators etc. vies with phone-enquiries and spreadsheets… I have completely different CVs, two e-mail signatures, two professional personas…

I’m being supported at every turn. The ILRT have been enormously flexible in allowing me to drop my hours to do additional research work. CDS have bent over backwards to find me ways to be involved. However, it’s clear that my ‘tweener’ status makes satisfying both quite difficult. I’ve been told, for example, that in order to get funding and get through the ‘research door’ more permanently, I need to publish more and put in grant applications… but the one thing that I’m not prepared to sacrifice for this is my family… so when do I write them?

I guess it’s good training in being a ruthlessly efficient administrator for when I finally do get a lectureship… but it seems to be a gap in an academic career progression that is not often talked about by those who have successfully navigated their way through it…

web presence

Sure, it’s probably therapeutic to write… maybe for its own sake, but what is the point, really, if no-one is going to read it.

Having transfered attentions to a blogspot blog for the last few weeks, searching for myself on the web (only prompted, I assure you, by the fact that I was told that other people were looking for me) I found that the blogspot blog didn’t register with google at all… consequently, despite the fact that I still can’t work out how to change the password on this one so that I can remember it, I’ll be coming back here.

The point of having a blog, after all, is to use it and be seen using it… surely!

Just about submitted the second revisions of all four data chapters… there’s some real meat in their, hopefully I’ll take the time to outline some of it at a later date.

Only the theory to go now *gulp* and only a couple of months to get it written, polished and handed in.

Be glad when it’s over now

P.S… Have changed the password… phew!! How complicated is the dashboard on this thing?

Beginning again… again

Having finally finished with moving, holidays and faced with Jo’s departure to work at Nottingham Hospital… I’m back to work on the PhD… and endeavouring to keep this blog updated on a more regular basis…

Whether the aim of writing more often will actually come to anything is another question entirely… but since I have a blog, I ought to at least write something in it!

The first day or two back will be taken up with admin… there is a summer’s worth of e-mail to clear and a few household tasks that need to be sorted out… but as soon as that is done then I have two papers to write to present at the upcoming ‘Signs of God’ conference… I’ll publish them here once they’re done.

Watch this space… no-one will be more surprised than me if I actually do manage to get something consistent written here!

The lie of ‘of course deaf is wrong’

Regarding Hilary Freeman’s article in the Daily Mail, I have had two notes from Deaf people saying that their comments in the Mail and the Times have been suppressed… yes… not all of my comments have been published either… they reserve the right to do that… handy isn’t it?

However, anyone with access to the original Mail article (does anyone know if they have to keep them on file?) will see that the present incarnation has been substantially altered and wording changed, particularly where they make factual errors or misrepresent people who have then been prepared to threaten them with legal action.

What Freeman’s article now appears to be in a more personal account of her experience growing up with a deaf younger brother. It’s a typical story of family grief and environmental adaptation, ad-hoc interpretation and coping with hearing-centred conformism, of linguistic and pathological confusion and frustration… It’s such a world away from the kind of interactive, loving and accepting upbringing that Tomato and Paula will be giving their daughter that it infuriates me to see comments on some of the sites condemning them for being terrible parents… How can a Deaf person be a terrible parent when the love and nurture their children, and hearing people be good parents when they force their deaf children to struggle to communicate even within their own family?

So, all I would say to Freeman now is… you’re not alone… Sadly your story reflects the experiences of thousands of those who have deaf children, deaf siblings or who are deaf… and who have been told right from the outset that ‘deaf’ is wrong and curable, and that only ‘hearing’ is acceptable. Unfortunately, this is a lie… and a damaging one because of the way that it attributes the success or failure of the transition from deaf to hearing to the child’s own efforts and the efforts of their family, and heaps condemnation upon those who don’t succeed in becoming sufficiently hearing.

Note: I’m not denying here that physical deafness is the lack of a physical sense… and I’m not denying that the hearing world is built around sound-based language… and so I’m not denying that those who either cannot hear or who cannot speak are disabled in their interactions with the hearing world by hearing society itself… Rather, I’m arguing that this does not directly attribute disability to the person themselves… why should “all five senses” be in working order before classifying that person as whole?

Why not, instead, accept Deaf people’s natural orientation as visual people and their authoring of natural visual sign languages and celebrate the amazing potential for human diversity that this demonstrates. Why not work to broaden humanity rather than limit it by setting up a straw man of hearing-based disability and then knocking it down by eradication of the ‘deaf gene’. Why not look at what this does to the limits between disability and ‘hearing’ and ‘Deaf’ as cultural constructs rather than inherently physical categories…

If journalists are to do their jobs, they must overcome their own personal angst and engage with both (multiple) sides of the story. Read accounts of people who have been through the same struggles both Deaf and hearing. Contact the British Deaf Association and NOT the RNID (the latter also have to represent the views of hard of hearing people who grew up in the hearing world and so can’t exclusively represent Deaf people). Contact Deaf academics Dr Steve Emery and Dr Paddy Ladd. Contact Tomato and Paula directly. Contact specific university departments who work investigating Deaf knowledges. Contact Deaf community activists; the people at www.stopeugenics.org, those at www.grumpyoldeafies.com. Consult Deaf-owned blogs currently commenting on the same area. feel free to ask me too if it’ll help, but I’m not Deaf and I’ll only point you those who are).

Listen to what they say, wrestle with the diversity of Deaf opinion, think about it, digest it, understand it… and then tell people about it… but don’t simply discount it as wrong or invalid.

For a more balanced approach from someone who more appreciates the Deaf side of the story more, look at the Independent’s Dominic Lawson here.

5000 words…

The PhD has reached 5000 words. Not all will be kept I’m sure but it’s a start. I’m currently working my way through Pierre Desloges’ description of the Deaf Spaces of the Paris Deaf community in the 1770s. Very interesting and so much information there for those who thing that the Abbé de l’Epée or anyone else ‘invented’ sign language…

Anyway… just to bring together some other information on the Gallaudet situation, particularly following my response to Lennard Davis’ article in the Chronicle (see below). This time it’s I. King Jordan himself who, on the 22nd, published a letter in the Washington Post in which he treads the same line, condemning what he calls the “small but vocal group of deaf people who define the community narrowly”… these he calls the ‘absolutists’ and he argues that they are destroying the university’s inclusive vision of Gallaudet.

I’m not going to comment on the internal politics of Gallaudet. I’ve never been there and I don’t know the American situation very well. If you want reaction, there’s plenty here and here from Deaf and others in America. However, I think it’s worth tying the two articles together and commenting on what’s happening from an academic point of view.

Gallaudet is not a university – well, of course it’s a university, but it’s not just a university. It is possibly the most prominent symbol in the world of Deaf people’s ability to attain their full potential by creating a deaf-owned space and without having to assimilate into the hearing world and it has achieved this in the face of 200 years of worldwide Oralist oppression (I’m using all these terms despite, and perhaps because of the enormous emotional charge they carry). It’s a central landmark in the Deaf world; a representative pole that measures the tide of US (and world) Deaf identity.

Of course, not all Deaf people in the states can go to Gallaudet and not all Deaf in the states are represented by those who do… but then not all Native Americans have stood at Wounded Knee and not all Black people attended Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. But that doesn’t mean they are less Native American or Black… It’s what the place and events signify in the memory of the community that matters.

Unfortunately, what’s happened at Gallaudet is that the landmark status of the university in the Deaf community has not diminished, but the time for I. King Jordan and others to play a role in that representation is now over, and they won’t let go.

The Gallaudet ‘Deaf President Now‘ protests in 1988 were symbolic of a first step in Deaf people taking control of Gallaudet and so, of their own representation. At that time, the idea of a politically Deaf, ASL first-language user being elected was a non-starter… it just wasn’t going to happen and so Jordan was elected to the presidency to represent ‘d.e.a.f.’ America and their academic future. The grassroots, signing Deaf celebrated that, and looked forward to what his presidency would bring.

Now, nearly 30 years later, the boot is on the other foot, but instead of celebrating the successful empowerment of the Deaf community that came through his presidency and stepping out of the way to finally allow the grassroots Deaf community in the U.S. to rise up and take its rightful ownership of Gallaudet and what it represents (as other Deaf organisations are doing, see the BDA’s language ownership campaign in the U.K.) Jordan has proven once and for all that he, as a d.e.a.f. person, does not have the same mind as the Deaf community.

Post-colonial theory is full of this. Ahmad’s criticism of Fanon was that he was too ‘French’ and had got so used to using fancy philsophical theory that he couldn’t relate to the people any more; Fanon’s ‘Black skin, white masks’ is very much about that. In fact, the whole theoretical area of postcolonialism and development is about following those processes of territorial, representational, physical and mental colonisation and de-colonisation and what it is that happens when a colonised people want to take back responsibility for self-determination.

What Jordan has done is no great surprise. By writing his letter he has admitted that he can’t let go of the task of representing the d.e.a.f. community for right or wrong. He is clearly hurt because he doesn’t feel wanted any more and he’s even more hurt that the future that he planned for the d.e.a.f. community in America is not welcome within that community. To coin a well known phrase… the “Mask of Benevolence” has slipped, and all we can now see is the ugly face of bitterly jilted power.

20 days… 4500 words

It’s going slowly… more slowly than I would like.

I had to stop at the beginning of last week and restructure the way that I was thinking about writing. I ended up with words full of information I didn’t need and had to go back to putting up peices of paper on the board and brainstorming until the ideas came clear again. I never realised quite how selective you have to be to write a thesis but it really is restructive, sooo restructive. I’ll give you an example.

Imagine trying to write an account of Deaf history without going into any depth on the abbé de l’Epée or the whole oral vs manual debate… you can do it, but only if you concentrate on issues and characters that would normally appear to be marginal. For example: One of the central characters of the first chapter is Azy d’Etavigny. Who? *nods* yeah right… actually, he was the best known student of Etienne de Fay and ended up propelling Pereire to fame by his mastery of oral performance… in fact, he is the first example that we have of a deaf person who grew up in deaf space and acquired sign language and then preserved that deaf space out into the hearing world. However, because he’s always been associated with the careers of Pereire and others, he’s always been masked by them and pulling him out into the limelight seems somehow wrong; not for him as he is well worthy of study but because the other, better known characters don’t get a proper mention and you feel like you’re missing out great chunks of data.

Such is the inertia of history as it’s been told over time… and I suppose the importance of what I’m trying to do in telling it differently but I can already see objections from some who embrace a more traditional approach wanting to know why I haven’t figured the principle characters. I have to let the references and setting-up do the foundation work for me there so that my story can be seen for itself, and also in contrast to the more traditional accounts.

So, that was the struggle – how to write a history of deaf spaces rather than simply fall back into newly discovered information about the traditional story. That’s perhaps for another day.

Hi Gill, if you’re reading, thanks for your encouragement. I’ll try and keep this up so that you can see what it’s really like writing a thesis.

Hi also to Miles who has mailed me about a presentation I’m doing this Friday at CDS in Bristol on ‘Who owns Deaf history’. Miles is the author of a vast amount of research into the Deaf community in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. There is a great reference bibliography here , information on South and South-West Asia, on Africa, and the Ottoman Court. Along with Groce’s information on Martha’s Vineyard, this is amazing stuff on early Deaf communities…

What we need is a site to pull this, and other Deaf historical material together… anyone got time to compile and host it?

I’ll try and write the presentation in a format that is readable, and make it available on here, or linked.

Now… back to Desloges and the spaces of the Paris Deaf community.

Day 4 – and I finally started typing

Where was day three you ask? Am I getting tired of blogging already?

Ok… so I think an essential element of keeping yourself interested in blogging, unless you’re totally self-obsessed, is having people read your blog… as far as I know, no-one’s reading this yet, which makes it harder to write. I guess, if i were only using this as a forum for publication and dissemination then that would be OK as it’s then up to an audience to read it or not but if you’re looking to develop links with other interested parties, be aware that it’s not going to happen overnight.

Also, blogging is fine as an activity but it does take time out of the day and the last thing I want to do sometimes is sit here and type in an entry when I need to get on writing the PhD.  I guess one key is not to feel guilty if you don’t enter something every day and only to type when you have something more to add. Anyone tracking this with RSS would be mighty cheesed off to find that there was nothing but drivel being added on a daily basis. Better, I think, to wait and add something of value.

These are not criticisms, simply comments, and things to bear in mind when you decide to use a blog as a publication method.

Ok… well, yesterday, having submitted the plan to my prospective supervisor (who hasn’t replied yet. Perhaps the debate that i’ve been having with Jo about people’s e-mail etiquette can wait for another day), I actually started typing yesterday. 500 words on the emergence of the small Deaf community around Etienne de Fay in the Abbaye de St-Jean in Amiens. Much of that might go into an appendix but it all needs typing, so I don’t regret the time. Today I plan to push on with that and get up to the Desloges examples.

Other than that, most of my thinking attention has been take up by an article by Lennard J. Davis  sent to me by David Brake http://blog.org and forwarded by Sam http://www.samkinsley.com/ concerning the recent Deaf protests at Gallaudet. The article can be found here: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=j1kwykr398gz88fxgrdp8tj6n7wldcny

You can read the article for yourself but in case you want a summary, Davis is responding to the recent high profile Deaf mobilisation over the leadership of Gallaudet university which he sees as based on a short-sighted backlash from the Deaf community over the failure of Jane K. Fernandes to fit the architypal Deaf ‘mould’. He argues that although Deaf people have suceeded in re-defining themselves away from the disability model and towards a model of linguistic and cultural community identity, this move is fundamentally flawed by being based on essentialised aspects of identity which flounder in what he calls a ‘new age of post-identity’.

He says: “I am arguing that defining the deaf or any other social group in terms of ethnicity, minority status, and nationhood (including “deaf world” and “deaf culture”) is outdated, outmoded, imprecise, and strategically risky”

The article is well written, but unfortunately the clearest message it gives for someone reading from within the academic Deaf studies community is that whilst Davis is clearly passionate about the dangers of essentialised identities, he sadly appears to have missed recent evolutions within the Deaf community that are embracing a becoming-processural ‘Deafhood’ and leaving the fixity of previous models behind.

Now, I’m not going to go into the definition of Deafhood here, particularly as it has no one definition and will continue to be defined and re-defined by generations of Deaf people for years to come. You can see my meagre first attempt on wikipedia here (if a Deaf person would like to take over and add more that would be great?) . A much fuller exploration is available here in ASL video or in the book by Paddy Ladd which started it all off. There will also be a Deafhood site going live soon at www.deafhood.com. In some ways, it is an idea that is already showing flavours of geographical diversity as American Deaf take it one way and European Deaf go another. This isn’t a problem and actually mirrors what happened (and is still happening) with other movements like Feminism, Postcolonialism, Black or other racially based-studies, Nationalisms… the list could go on.

And it is this inherent diversity that is so visible within Deafhood that suggests that Davis’ concern over the political foundations of the recent Gallaudet protest is perhaps more influenced by his background within disability studies (which, incidently, is also being transformed by alternate considerations of physical Otherness into a ‘becoming’) than it is by real observation of the facts. The key to the Gallaudet protests was not the enforcement of an essentialised identity. Rather, it was based on exactly the kind of self-questioning, reflexive movement that Davis is looking for. It’s a shame he appears to have missed it.

Day 2 – and the excuses are over

Well, it’s day two of writing the PhD… the first plan has been sent to my propective supervisor and I’ve just finished tidying up all the expenses from fieldwork… I’m running out of excuses… I’m going to have to start writing soon.

 The supervisor thing probably needs explaining. I had two: one hearing, one Deaf… one in Geography (hearing), one in Deaf studies (Deaf). Now, the hearing one has just left to take up a post at a different university which has rather left me in the lurch since the geography department in Bristol seems to be rapidly moving away from the social and cultural geography side towards an emphasis on economic and political geography and there is no-one there who is really working in the areas that I am. So I am busily trying to persuade someone else to take over.

It’s this kind of thing that demonstrates the interconnectedness of the social sciences to me. Oddly enough, I didn’t know anything about human geography at all before I actually ended up there (I could probably argue that I don’t know much about it now either!). I was originally trying to go through the sociology department but the concerned people there happened to be away at the time of my application. But it’s been an interesting theoretical visit and one that promises to be immensley valuable for my working future even if I struggle with the flavour of some geographical texts that seem more concerned with the construction of space itself than they do with the inhabitants of the spaces. I’m afraid I had a similar attitude to theoretical linguistics in my undergrad years at Essex; it didn’t seem interesting unless it was actually being applied to something real. Perhaps that’s why I like Utopian theory… it presupposes an application of the imagination, even if it’s necessarily cracked and incomplete.

 Now I have to go and buy a diary for 2007… it’s another chance to put off typing, and I really do need one before I get swamped with dates I can’t manage.

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