Ten days to go… and counting :)

Dear all,

For those of you unaware of what’s going on in my life, I’m getting married on the 1st September to a lovely lady called Jo… To anyone in a similar situation… do it… don’t even hestitate (BTW… congratulations to Olivier who has just got engaged )… although you might want to talk to your intended about the time that it will add onto completing your PhD, particularly if you are limited in time and funding… which we are… but that’s another question.

So, this week is a final week of trying to get as much done on empirial chapter three as possible so that I can hand it in to Paddy, Yvonne and Robert and let them read it whilst we’re doing last-minute preparation and then enjoying a well earned holiday and sorting out the move into our new flat in Cardiff.

And, lo and behold, up pops an interesting question from the writing… which is what do you do when the Deaf community pretty much re-makes theory as it’s perceived by the rest of the academic world?

You see, Deaf people in their daily interactions are only partially reached by movements and discourses that colour the hearing world… Spaces and places, essentialism and anti-essentialism, phalocentrism, feminism, nationalism… all of these theories that are built based on hearing world events, discourses and discussions… on the way that the hearing world works. Instead, because Deaf people primarily live and move in a world of knowledge mediated by sign language and by visual information (not the same as writing… but that’s another question too)… they naturally respond to human and social behaviours to come up with entirely different shaped concepts. Porous and inclusive nationalism… holistic and necessary essentialism… person-based spaces… ‘placeless’ spaces…

I’m supervising an MSc thesis at the moment on the parallels between feminism and Deaf theory… and it’s very revealing to see the way that Deaf people’s thought simply explodes the boundaries of essentialism, becoming, biological determinism and so on in a way that is not with feminism… and is certainly not against feminism… but is simply Other to feminist theory that is, whether we like it or not, primarily still formulated as a challenge to dominant, phalocentric theory…

On the other hand Deaf theory, at least non-adversarial Deaf theory (theory that’s not challenging something like Oralism) is simply authored by Deaf people within the Deaf community… Consequently, it develops in its own direction and then surfaces fully formed to challenge hearing knowledges… Thus, for example, there is no need to challenge a fixed (but also constantly evolving) biological determinism, or becoming, or essentialism since all are in some way necessary to the evolution of the Deaf community… neither one, nor the other… but both at the time are enemies and friends at the same time.

Kat, who’s writing the thesis, and myself are hoping to publish some of this at a later date… However, dropping it into a tradition that is already pretty adversarial might not be enormously comfortable and it’ll be interesting to see what reaction it brings.

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.

Day um… 18th January

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.

—

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

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.