[EDLING:2223] Deafness and the riddle of identity

[Francis M Hult]

Via lgpolicy...

> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i19/19b00601.htm
> >From the issue dated January 12, 2007
> 
> Deafness and the Riddle of Identity
> By LENNARD J. DAVIS
> 
> The recent demonstrations at Gallaudet University did more to launch
> deafness and deaf culture onto the national scene than any event since the
> release of the 1986 film Children of a Lesser God. Media reports of
> hour-by-hour dramas unfolding on the campus, culminating in a shutdown of
> the university, evoked in many people's minds the student revolution of
> the 60s. But in the hearing world, from blogosphere to op-ed page,
> observers expressed confusion about what the issues really were and why
> there was so much turmoil and anger over the mere choosing of an
> upper-level administrator.
> 
> That administrator, Jane K. Fernandes, selected to be president, was
> quoted widely as saying that one of the reasons she was such a lightning
> rod for criticism was that deaf students and faculty members perceived her
> as "not deaf enough." That charge was quickly rebutted by many within the
> deaf community, who said that their opposition to Fernandes was based not
> on her degree of deafness but on her leadership style, decisions she had
> made in the past, irregularities in the selection process, and her
> inability to quell the agitation at Gallaudet.
> 
> But the "not deaf enough" issue is alive and well among deaf scholars,
> students, and activists. Even though Fernandes may have exaggerated that
> accusation to bolster her own position, and even though her detractors
> denied its relevance, the charge formed at least part of the subtext of
> students' anger and is a topic of debate within the deaf community. Now
> that passions have been spent and an interim president, Robert R. Davila,
> appointed, it 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, and so on. Even with all the recent
> hoopla about deaf issues, most people probably aren't paying a lot of
> attention to what goes on within the deaf community. But the discussions
> there can point the way to a new and better understanding of identity in
> our postmodern world.
> 
> What does it mean to be "not deaf enough"? In Fernandes's case, the
> accusation meant that she was not a native signer of American Sign
> Language (ASL). Fernandes learned to sign later in life; she is best
> described as a user of Pidgin Signed English (PSE), a blend of English and
> ASL. So she cannot speak with the "accentless" signs that would read, to a
> native signer, as the most elegant ASL. In effect, she would be speaking
> sign language the way that Henry Kissinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or
> perhaps Borat speak English.
> 
> Many hearing people would deem any prejudice against someone because of
> his or her accent shocking and unethical. To understand the issue, you
> have to know that ASL has become the armature on which the figure of deaf
> identity has been built. Until relatively recently, deafness was seen as
> simply a physical impairment: the absence of hearing. In the past, much
> discrimination against deaf people was based on the assumption that they
> were in fact people without lan-guagethat is, dumb. And "dumb" carried the
> sense of being not only mute but also stupid, as in a "dumb" animal.
> 
> But over the past 30 or so years, the 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.
> 
> Important scholarship formed the foundation for this new construction of
> deafness as a sociological phenomenon rather than a physical impairment.
> That view of deafness became possible only after linguists like William C.
> Stokoe Jr. established ASL as a genuine language (in the late 50s and
> early 60s), not just a set of gestures or pantomime, as had been thought.
> Later, in 1993, Harlan Lane, a professor of psychology and linguistics at
> Northeastern University (and the winner of a 1991 MacArthur "genius
> award"), 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, since they not only shared a
> common language (ASL) and, by this time, a common culture, but also were
> seen by others as a separate group.
> 
> Other deaf-studies scholars who solidified the concept of the deaf as a
> minority group include Carol Padden, Tom Humphries, Jack R. Gannon, John
> Vickrey Van Cleve, Benjamin J. Bahan, Paddy Ladd, and MJ Bienvenu.
> 
> 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 and at institutions like Gallaudet and the
> National Technical Institute for the Deaf. It was that definition of deaf
> identity that fueled some of the student animosity toward Fernandes and
> the protests at Gallaudet. (Fernandes was also seen as lacking other
> characteristics, besides classic ASL proficiency, that deaf "insiders"
> consider crucial to "pure" deafness: a physical warmth and directness that
> is intense and intimate; pride in being deaf; and a certain attitude, both
> amused and cynical, toward the hearing world that results from a shared
> set of experiences. Fernandes was seen as not having those traits and
> experiences, and as being cold, aloof, detached from those markers  in
> sum, "not deaf enough.")
> 
> The construct of the deaf as a linguistic, ethnic minority is attractive,
> but flawed. Yes, it has removed the biological stigma of deafness; for the
> most part, the deaf are no longer viewed as "handicapped" or "disabled."
> Deaf people get to be a sociological group, a "community." But there is a
> negative side: The idea of an ethnic group or minority is tinged with the
> brutal history of racial politics. There is a sense in which slavery,
> apartheid, miscegenation laws, and medical experiments have forged the
> apartness of the racialized minority and in which the oppressor group has
> created the oppressed. Is that the best model on which deafness should
> base its existence? Furthermore, a re-examination of identity politics is
> under way in this country that questions even the concept of group
> identity. Postmodernism combined with globalization has undermined
> traditional notions of individual and community. It's hard enough to say
> what it is to be an "American" now, let alone a member of a minority in
> the United States. It seems to me the minority model of deaf identity is
> too crude, too rigid, too limiting.
> 
> The central problem with defining deaf people as a linguistic group is
> that to do so, you have to patrol the fire wall between the deaf and
> nondeaf in very rigid ways. If deaf people are defined as only those who
> are native users of ASL, you have to define all nonusers of ASL as
> "other." That excludes, or at least marginalizes, deaf people who are
> orally trainedthat is, who were taught to eschew ASL for speech alone;
> have cochlear implants; or never had the chance to learn sign language.
> Many people who grew up in non-ASL settings in the 1950s and 1960s and who
> have quite happily thought of themselves as deaf would have to reassign
> themselves to some other camp. Likewise, the strict linguistic-group
> definition expels hard-of-hearing people who have not learned ASL.
> Ironically, the model also stigmatizes those who have been educated
> orally; they are seen as victims of oral education rather than as victims
> of audism. Since it is hearing parents who usually make the decision to
> educate their deaf children orally, rather than with ASL, or to give them
> cochlear implants, it doesn't seem fair to define those children as not
> deaf. The other flaw in the model is that it defines hearing, signing
> children of deaf adults (CODA's) as deaf, since they are native
> sign-language speakers. One could argue that CODA's aren't discriminated
> against by the hearing world, but if one takes that tack, then one has to
> abandon the idea that language is the key defining term. And that brings
> us back to some notion of deafness as a biological impairment.
> 
> Defining deafness in terms of ethnicity doesn't hold up any better than
> linguistic definitions. While it is true that many deaf people share a
> common culture, history, language, and social behavior, with the advent of
> the Internet, the mainstreaming of deaf students into regular classrooms,
> the decline of residential schooling for the deaf, and the demise of deaf
> clubs (where deaf people in large cities gathered regularly to socialize),
> it is harder to argue that the deaf are significantly different from the
> nondeaf. There is less of a there there. Changes in the overall culture
> have to some degree erased the sense of "otherness" that the deaf
> historically have held on to as a way of defining themselves. That is why
> places like Gallaudet have come to be seen nostalgically as the "home" of
> deaf people and deaf culture: They continue to define the deaf as a
> separate cultural group. (Naturally the choice of an overseer of such a
> safe house would be seen as crucial, since that person would be a kind of
> keeper of the flame.)
> 
> The argument that the deaf are an ethnic minority also presupposes a
> "pure" deaf person, imitating the worst aspects of racial profiling. In
> this ethnic-group model, just as in the linguistic model, there is an
> in-group and an out-group. Those most "in" are deaf-on-deaf people, that
> very small percentage (perhaps only 5 percent of all those born deaf) who
> come from a deaf familythat is, whose parents were born deaf. The elite
> also includes those who have been lucky enough to have attended Gallaudet,
> the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and other deaf institutions
> of higher education. Excluded are the hard of hearing, those who learned
> to lip-read and speak instead of sign, hearing children of deaf adults,
> those who never had a chance to learn sign language (because they were too
> poor, or the facilities weren't available), and deaf people with limb
> impairments or spinal injuries that make it impossible for them to sign.
> 
> Further complicating definitions of deafness are all things digital.
> Deafness "disappears" in cyberspace. While using the Internet or pagers,
> for example, deaf people do not use language much differently from anyone
> else. In the blogosphere, we are all bloggers, whether we are deaf or not.
> 
> And is a deaf person excluded from his ethnic identity of deafness if he
> or she chooses not to act deaf? Some deaf people have lip-reading and
> speaking skills that might allow them to pass for hearing. Others might
> choose to avoid the more obvious deaf markers  such as colloquial ASL,
> physical warmth, and intensity  that I've already mentioned.
> 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"? (Or would the comparative term be "cochleos?")
> 
> The ethnic model is also dubious because of the current association
> between ethnic groups and violence. Regionalism, tribalism, and ethnicity
> have recently led to wars in Darfur, Bosnia, and the Middle East. Is the
> model of ethnic pride really more desirable than a cosmopolitan
> internationalism?
> 
> One of the key notions of an ethnos, a people, is the idea of an extended
> kinship system. People within an ethnic group are related not only by
> language, history, and culture, but also by a family structure that passes
> along a genetic inheritance. But the vast majority of deaf people do not
> come from deaf families. According to a widely cited statistic, well over
> 90 percent of deaf people are born to hearing families. The deaf, hearing
> children of deaf adults, people with disabilities, and queer folk are, as
> the deaf-studies scholar Robert J. Hoffmeister has written, only "one
> generation thick," having parents and children most likely different from
> them. In that sense, those four groups have more in common with each other
> than with any ethnic group. One can argue that deaf people pass along
> their culture through a nonkinship system, but then you are talking about
> a different kind of social organization than an ethnic group.
> 
> Related to this point is a strategic issue. Are legal protections for
> ethnic groups used as effectively to redress problems related to
> disability as those in the Americans With Disabilities Act? Does one want
> to choose the category of ethnic group as the regnant defining term and
> then seek legal protection or redress under that status? Or is it better
> to allow legal rights and protections to apply under the statutes that
> cover disability? People with disabilities have fought hard and revised
> our notion of civil rights. Why should deaf people adhere to a problematic
> notion of ethnicity when their rights are more clearly protected under the
> rubric of disability?
> 
> The concept "deaf world" or "deaf culture" (indicated by ASL signs) is
> compelling for many deaf people. It does not have any associations with
> biological deficiency or race. The problem with the terms is that they are
> too general and too elastic. If you start defining what you mean by
> either, you immediately fall back into categorical generalizations of the
> kind we have been discussing. Who is deaf? Who belongs in the "deaf
> world"? How do you get into it? Who are the gatekeepers? What makes "deaf
> culture" different from any other culture? If one were to substitute
> "white world," "black world," "Jewish world," or "non-Jewish world" for
> "deaf world," would one be happy to celebrate and analyze the meaning of
> those terms? What if we said "ASL-users-only world," or "40-percent- to
> 100-percent-hearing-loss world"?
> 
> 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. Of course no group of people can exist without some kind
> of cultural and social distinctions. But in thinking through, in the best
> theoretical sense, new directions for deafness, we have to look at the
> problems and the solutions with a high degree of rigor.
> 
> Deaf people aren't the only ones struggling to define themselves in this
> new age of post-identity. They don't have to go it alone. What brings
> together all the social injustices of the past 200 years is the idea that
> people with various bodily traits have been discriminated against because
> of those traits. Rather than defining people according to those traits, a
> newer, more-inclusive concept of identity holds that you can't base your
> full and complex identity on those putative bodily traits because you
> can't justify their existence as markers anymore. The grand categories of
> race, gender, and so on are no longer valid because they no longer contain
> rigid fire walls. Who is black and who is white, who is a man and who is a
> woman are questions whose answers are murkier than ever. Likewise,
> deafness as a category can exist only if you rely on comparably rigid fire
> walls. If you let go of the idea of rigid boundaries, then you have to
> face a more continuous line of possibilities, including the
> hearing-impaired, hard of hearing, partially deaf, profoundly deaf, and so
> on. You also have to deal with people with varying degrees of both oral
> and ASL abilities, including a range of ASL usage among children of deaf
> adults. So the concept of deafness can get very messy, unless you perform
> a kind of "common sense" purifying of the categorywhich might work, but
> has the same pitfalls as "common sense" racial categories, for example.
> Common sense in this context is really just socially constructed truisms
> that are never really common at all.
> 
> 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.
> We would be better off expanding our current notions of identity by being
> less Procrustean and more flexible. Rather than trying to force the foot
> into a glass slipper, why not make a variety of new shoes that actually
> fit?
> 
> In that scenario, for example, people who are "one generation thick" could
> find commonality. So people with disabilities, deaf people, gay people,
> and children of deaf adults could say: We represent one potential way out
> of the dead end of identity politics. We are social groups that are not
> defined solely by bodily characteristics, genetic qualities, or inherited
> traits. We are not defined by a single linguistic practice. We need not be
> defined in advance by an oppressor. We choose to unite ourselves for new
> purposes. We are not an ethnic or minority group, but something new and
> different, emerging from the smoke of identity politics and rising like a
> phoenix of the postmodern age.
> 
> Lennard J. Davis, who grew up with deaf parents, is a professor of
> English, disability and human development, and medical education at the
> University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the editor of the second edition
> of The Disability Studies Reader (Routledge, 2006).
> 
> http://chronicle.com
> Section: The Chronicle Review
> Volume 53, Issue 19, Page B6