Let’s play identity
[I]t might be useful to examine what deaf identity might be and how that identity fits in with current notions of other identities based on race, gender, sexual orientation…[T]he status of deaf people has changed in important ways, as deaf activists and scholars have reshaped the idea of deafness, using the civil-rights movement as a model for the struggle to form a deaf identity. Deaf people came to be seen not just as hearing-impaired, but as a linguistic minority, isolated from the dominant culture because that culture didn’t recognize or use ASL…Harlan Lane, a professor of psychology and linguistics…drew on the ideas of Edward Said and Michel Foucault to suggest that the deaf were like a colonized people. Lane was instrumental in defining deaf identity based on the notion that deaf people were a linguistic and even an ethnic minority…The definition of the deaf as a colonized, ethnic, linguistic minority has in turn been widely accepted in deaf circles and taught for more than a decade in deaf-studies programs…
A colonized, ethnic, linguistic minority – I can certainly see the linguistic and minority, but colonized? Ethnic? Well – no doubt that’s exactly why words like that tend to make me come over all suspicious. It’s because I think there may be some conning going on. Who, may I ask, colonized ‘the deaf’, and what the hell for? To corner all their minerals? To force them to find ivory? To disappoint and confound The International Commonist* Conspiracy? Because it was a way to employ younger sons? Why? And as for ethnic – well I always knew that was a stupid meaningless elastic word that people use to make themselves feel special, and that just puts it beyond doubt.
[I]s a deaf person excluded from his ethnic identity of deafness if he or she chooses not to act deaf?…African-Americans who speak standard English and do not code-switch are sometimes accused of being “Oreos” — black on the outside and white on the inside. Do we really want to go down the road of thinking of some people as deaf “Oreos”?
Hey, I don’t even want to go down the road of thinking of African-Americans who speak standard English and do not code-switch as Oreos, let alone thinking of deaf people that way. That is precisely one of the chief reasons I despise the whole identity mess – this business of telling people they’re not [whateveritis] enough, not authentic enough; this business of expecting them to code-switch whether they want to or not. It’s coercive and parochial and stifling and I hate it.
The problem with such concepts is that they exclude people, reduce their rights, and create marginalized communities. And then there is the question of who gets to set up the barriers and checkpoints. In the past, it was hearing people who did; now segments of the deaf community have declared themselves the gatekeepers, by defining deafness in the narrowest possible terms.
What I said. Parochial and stifling. I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.
*McCarthy always pronounced it Commonist.
I once saw a documentary about a deaf family in America. From what I can remember, the deafness was congenital and they were about to have another deaf child. There was an operation available that would enable the child to hear, but the father didn’t want the child to have it because then it wouldn’t be able to participate fully in the deaf family’s culture because the child would be educated amongst hearing children and so wouldn’t want to sign.
I must admit that at the time I was in two minds about this, but having learned from discussions about identity politics here and elsewhere I would be more certain now. The family would be abusing the child, cutting it off from wider society. Not only that, but the child would never experience the beauty of music.
Oddly, I can’t remember how the documentary ended. I hope the kid had the operation.
The idea that ‘the child would be educated amongst hearing children and so wouldn’t want to sign’ is a very odd. There are numerous situations around the world where children use one language at home and another in school and no doubt plenty of cases where the home language is a sign language.
This is complete madness.
There have been small protests and complaints here, because of the advance of medical science and technology look as if they are going to at least allievate the deafness of some people. By implantation of extra auditory circuits/electronics, etc.
Some have decided that they would rather be part of a cosy little deaf ghetto, using sign, rather than become nearer to the nomally able.
This is inverted snobbery of the worst sort…
“We want to remain dis-abled/less-able, because we can then get lots of sympathy”
Just like the post from Andy White, above.
Ugrrrrr …..
I recall reading a piece by Oliver Sacks about a blind person who received surgery so he could see – but turned out profoundly unhappy as he never learned to make the connection between visual impressions and the objects he only knew by texture, smell, sound etc. His visual impressions remained a jumble of colours that were deeply confusing to him. Visual impressions are, for me at least, much ‘stronger’ than auditory ones, so I’m not sure whether the same would go for a congenitally deaf person who learned from childhood to get around without sound. But it’s something to keep in mind: seeing and hearing involves a lot more than purely the sensory impressions.
A few years ago I was living in a former mining village on the outskirts of Newcastle. A couple of mid-teen lasses there had a reputation as ‘chavs’; disrespectful, unruly and ‘no better than they ought to be’.
One afternoon I was gazing idly out of my window when the walked by with a third girl and I realised that all three were signing, quite fluently and quickly. Seems the third girl was deaf and these chav lasses had taught themselves to sign so their friend could be included. No doubt they were ‘including’ her in mischief, but I was oddly moved.
Doesn’t really add anything to the debate, but it just came to mind.
Yeah. Exactly. Which is why Amartya Sen tried really hard to persuade people that there are alternatives – multiple, voluntary, flexible identities, which are less murderous. But the fashion is mostly the other way; hence the helpful creation of a ‘deaf ethnicity,’ blurgh.