Neglect

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

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.