[Linganth] plugging sessions

[Frank Bechter]

Deaf Studies' critical challenge to social theory
Thursday, November 18, 8:00am - 11:45am

       In the past two decades, anthropological study of deaf signers has
shown that primary categories of social description —- language, culture,
"ethnicity," identity —- can be applied to the deaf.  In this way, and
against a long history of systematic disenfranchisement of deaf signers,
the categories of social and linguistic theory are thus employed to
understand deaf signers as a more-or-less "normal" linguistic minority,
having their own community organizations, folklore, literary forms,
etiquette, internal sociolinguistic variation, and even typical forms of
gender, race and class bias.  The deaf cultural community is thus advanced
as an ethnographic domain wherein already-constituted insights of social
and linguistic theory can be evidenced, albeit with minor adjustments to
account for signing versus speaking.  In this way, the study of the deaf
not only legitimates the deaf along particular theoretical dimensions, but,
indeed, functions to legitimate these theoretical dimensions themselves,
with the unstated corollary that any aspect of deaf social life which
violates precepts of these scholarly discourses will be quietly sidelined.
       But what if heretofore sidelined aspects of deaf life are, in fact,
what is most fundamental to the deaf, and to any understanding of
them?  Indeed, what are the precepts at issue?  Thus, for example, the
study of the deaf has focused on deaf families, where cultural transmission
is in sympathy with a classic perspective -- and yet, deaf signers come
overwhelmingly from non-deaf families.  Linguists, meanwhile, have argued
for an SVO structure to ASL, but the highest aesthetic form of signing
("ASL storytelling") often contains no SVO constructions, nor, indeed, any
linear syntax whatsoever.
       This panel takes the empirical facts of deaf signing populations (in
the US and elsewhere) as its starting points, granting from the outset the
"cultural" status of deaf signing communities, and the "linguistic" status
of deaf signing systems, as essentially obvious -- not in need of
legitimization, but rather standing as daunting invitations to better
theorization of culture and language.  The goal, on the one hand, is to
better understand the deaf community and its forms.  At the same time,
however, we maintain that this is not possible in the absence of real
theoretical innovation.  Thus, though emerging through consideration of
deaf cases, the innovations we propose are advanced as valuable to, or even
fundamental to, a range of ethnographic contexts and critical discourses.
       All panelists' research involves extensive interaction with deaf
signers, and four panelists are themselves deaf scholars.  (The session
will be fully accessible in English and ASL.)  Given its critical aims,
where Deaf Studies itself stands under scrutiny, it is imperative that such
a session proceed in maximal dialogue with this emerging subfield, though
emphasizing anthropological methods and aims.  The session thus engages two
of Deaf Studies' foremost scholars as its discussants: Lennard Davis
(Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, 1995 Verso; The
Disability Studies Reader, ed., 1997 Routledge), and Benjamin Bahan (A
Journey into the DEAF-WORLD, 1996 Dawn Sign Press; and The Syntax of
American Sign Language: Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structure,
2000 MIT).

---------

Frank Bechter
fbechter at uchicago.edu
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL  60637