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 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.