DEAF space or the question of ‘what if’… June 1, 2011
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: Deaf space, Deafhood, hansel bauman, popular theory, utopics
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A problem is looming that is going to only get bigger… Having spent the last 6 or 7 years exploring the way that members of a self-recognising DEAF community produce spaces for being… and called it ‘DEAF space’, another ‘Deaf space’ is emerging which means something different.
This puts me (or rather, my work) in rather an interesting position; I’m finding that my work is being redefined by a popular expression of something that’s not what I researched at all…
I have no desire at all to fight over the name…
Firstly… because I know where Deaf space has come from (the Gallaudet architecture project)… and I know the people involved (notably Hansel Bauman). I like Hansel and his work… I even shared a platform with him at the recent AAG in Seattle. His work is firmly part of Deaf geographies and he’s a contributor on the DEAF space blogs.
So… there’s no issue there of telling Hansel that his work is wrong… it’s not… it’s just different.
Second… I don’t really even know whether ‘DEAF space’ is the best label for what I’ve been researching… see the previous post on boundaries of DEAF space for more on that… (mind you, I don’t know whether ‘Deaf space’ is any good for what Hansel’s been looking at, but it’s as good a name as any other).
Finally… I’m not really sure that there should be a difference made… after all… all you have to do is look at DEAF space (as I’ve described it… as a space that allows DEAF people to ‘fully be’…) and extend the utopian side of my thinking to a point where DEAF people start to have control over their built environment… and you end up with a Deaf space.
However, I guess it’s the need to see that linear path of argument, and then to follow it back and forth in a number of directions… and wonder what happens when space veers off it suddenly that makes me uncomfortable… that’s the kind of mental game that academics like to play… but how relevant is it really to the DEAF community?
That’s where Paddy Ladd’s Deafhood is so good, for all its potential theoretical fragility… it is an easy to grasp concept that really carries weight and moves people to action (or internal evolution), even in a popular form…
Deaf space as Hansel’s working on it, in a popular form, looks pretty much like what it is… environment designed around a different way of being human… it’s not ‘accommodation’ or ‘access’, it’s the social model of disability flipped around and given to the DEAF community…
Whereas what I’ve been researching is actually a kind of DEAF utopics… and what I’m moving gradually towards is a utopic theory that not only encompasses DEAF space, but extends that to others who life their lives from within differently able physical bodies…ultimately problematising the ‘DEAF’ of ‘DEAF space’.
Perhaps I can continue to use DEAF space… but actually start referring to it as only a part of what I research, which is more a kind of multiply sensed, human ‘what if’…
What transformative power is there though, in something that is necessarily a thought experiment… ?
Neglect April 19, 2007
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Uncategorized.Tags: BSL, Christianity, Church, DEAF, Deafhood, Heritage, Minorityhood, Ownership, Postcolonialism
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Oh the shame… it’s been over a month and a half since I wrote anything on here… beware, the writing up can take over your life… and if the writing doesn’t, then the guilt at not writing can.
Actually, I’m trying to get a balance on it at the moment. Jo’s revising for her exams and I keep telling her that perhaps less is more; that she might accomplish more if she actually works less, but better… I should probably take my own advice. Although I think a lot of it’s about prioritising things. In the last 6 weeks I’ve done the last bit of teaching that I’m doing this year (lost nearly a week preparing and delivering that), then went to London for an AHRC consultation on research funding (lost nearly another week preparing that), then there was Easter (lost a long weekend on that)… I mean, you’ve got to have time off but when you need a rhythm to write, breaking it every few days for ‘another’ important activity is not the best strategy in the world.
Happily, I shouldn’t have too many more interruptions now and I should be able to get on with it. This week has been better already.
To answer Donna’s questions in the comments from last time… (Hello Donna… sorry I’ve not written but I’ve found your blog now and I’ll read it and get in touch personally) Are there Deaf churches? and what about worship? There has always been quite a strong influence of Christianity in the Deaf community in the UK because right back at the time Deaf people were designated as a group in need of ‘help’, the church shouldered most of the responsibility (as they did with orphanages and the workhouse etc.) The legacy of the church hasn’t all been roses though… Paddy Ladd in his Deafhood book (2003) presents a number of stories that show that actually, in the same way that church workers tried to eradicate poverty by morally correcting the poor (remember this is Victorian times and early 20th century) they did the same with the Deaf community… training them to be ‘normal’ by threats of eternal condemnation and controlling or withholding services like interpreting until the Deaf people became compliant.
Then, as the church’s control waned, Deaf people continued to go to (often) Deaf congregations with Deaf ministers and for a period there were quite a lot. But in the 90s, a hearing guy gave a prophecy in a Deaf fellowship that Deaf people should integrate into mainstream hearing churches… Again, I don’t know who he was, or what his background was… but there are a lot of questions here too… Anyway, a lot of the churches obeyed and a lot of the Deaf churches closed (there is still at least one going, in N. Ireland). The only thing was that this left Deaf people integrated physically into the hearing church, but separate from the hearing congregation; reliant on BSL interpreters in the services, and still seeking each other out for fellowship… Now there is a mixed situation… with few Deaf-specific churches, but a lot of para-church groups running… check out http://deafchurch.co.uk/ (which I’ve only just discovered) for examples.
I think that’s about where things are at at the moment… but it leaves so many questions open that it’s hardly a conclusion…
- To what extent has the church, through things like signed songs etc. taken ownership of sign language away from Deaf people and turned it into an art form?
- How have hearing Christians appropriated it as a tool for worship when it’s actually Deaf people’s language?
- Is it better for Deaf Christians to meet with each other and have fellowship through sign or to be integrated into a hearing church?
- What is the motivation behind next year’s Spring Harvest BSL-track event?
- What impact will translations of the bible into BSL video have on a Deaf community that is used to having no written text in their first language and who will potentially be able to read it at home for the first time?
- How do you balance ideas of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual well-being and wholeness… with Deaf and hearing languages… what does Kingdom living look like here… how does ‘every tribe and tongue’ work with BSL…
- How do other countries do it? Have we exported the same attitudes as we have tended to export a church model?
At a time when the Christian church (in the UK at any rate) is recognising its largely Victorian heritage and questioning how many of its structures, traditions and attitudes are actually biblical, or merely handed down and human-authored these are important questions about the nature of Christianity and what our, and Deaf, relationships with God look like.
One particularly pertinent question is how Deaf-hearing relationships within the church (or perhaps here I should say between those who have a living relationship with Christ) differ from those outside… My guess is that a lot of the divisions that history has driven between Deaf and hearing people disappear through forgiveness and through a common relationship with Christ rather like the way that questions of politics between Québecois and English Canadians have to take second place when you know that you’re all living in the kingdom of God…
The question on worship is interesting… Deaf Christians worship the same as hearing Christians… but without singing… but this often involves signed songs… and how Deaf are they, really? When I started thinking about it, I flipped it around… I wondered how I might worship without singing? What might Spring harvest look like without music? What other forms of worship are we ignoring in favour of this one? and how much do we impose our assumptions about has to be on Deaf people making them feel like they’re missing something…
Anyway… enough hoovering the cat for this morning… I’d better get back to the Paris school in the early 19th century and see what the pupils are up to.
XX
Day um… 18th January January 18, 2007
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Uncategorized.Tags: DEAF, Deafhood, Disability, Essentalism, PhD
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So much for no-one reading… my brother Stephen has been on here and commented that he’s reading… he’s a lecturer at Brunel in Information Systems and Computing with a particular interest in perceptual media and eye tracking (which Jo is very excited about)
Second, this blogging malarkey actually works! Following the advice of Sam and David (see days one to three!) I contacted the Chronicle regarding the article by Lennard Davis that I mentioned last week and told them I’d blogged it… And they wrote back… And I replied… And then they wrote back again, and so did Lennard Davis… And so we started a little discussion about what he’d written and what I’d written which was very fruitful. I’m sure he won’t mind me putting a quote on here.
“Perhaps the difference has to do with a US vs. UK perspective. The UK’s scenario has always been one that was more about the continuities between disabilities and the way that the environment disables people. In the US there has been a very different genealogy in which Disability has been seen as a free-standing identity and the idea was to develop pride around a disability identity.”
I think this is perhaps something we’d both agree on, although I did point out to him that whilst this is the stance of a lot of disability theorists, most Deaf theory here doesn’t talk about Deaf people being disabled by their environment nearly as much as it talks about them as a linguistic and culture minority. If you want a good example of this see Ladd, Batterbury and Gulliver (forthcoming) in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, which should be out later this year.
In fact, geographical researchers on disability here are moving away from the environmental model in which disability is an impairment, to take it on as one of an infinite range of physical othernesses. Interestingly, this could perhaps even pave the way for a return to considering Deaf people within a continuum of disability identities without squashing the question of their linguistic and ontological otherness, although I find it hard to reconcile this kind of constructivist take on identity with the evidence that Deaf people still feel it necessary to construct themselves as linguistic others, and assert their right to own BSL and all contexts in which it is used (Gulliver 2004).
But, it’s the UK versus US aspect that interested me with particular reference to Deafhood, which I’d assumed had had some impact within the US Deaf community as far as I could tell from internet and rumours within the academic community. It turns out that it’s not as mainstream as it perhaps appears. So what does Deafhood, with its explicit rejection of Deaf as in any way impaired, look like within a disability politics model as opposed to one that is, as it is in Europe, primarily based on identity and ethnicity?
It makes me wonder if instead of seeing the Deaf community as a single global unit with a single voice and then worrying about the political direction that they are taking, we should instead be charting questions of representation, audience and becoming; Who is it that represents the Deaf community and how did they get to be where they are? Who’s listening to them, from where and with what aim? What evolutions are happening within the Deaf community? Where are they coming from?
Davis is certainly one voice, Paddy Ladd is another, the BDA in the UK are another, IRIS in France are another, the Deaf person in the street are a mutliplicity of others… and the span of the diversity is enormous (as are the number of visions of the ideal society of/with d/Deaf in and out). It will be fascinating to see how Deafhood plays itself out in this forum.
BTW – the PhD is advancing, and the supervisor question is being slowly resolved. However, I’d like to be writing faster than I am… keep plugging away.
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Gulliver, M. (2004) – BSL Ours. Thesis submitted for the MSc in Deaf Studies at the Univeristy of Bristol. UK.
Day 4 – and I finally started typing January 12, 2007
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: Blog, DEAF, Deafhood, Disability, Essentalism, Gallaudet, Musings, PhD
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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.
