Re-Presenting Deaf

Your understanding

Media, Power, and Ideology: Re-presenting DEAF

All over Europe: nothing.

. . of the world is based on assumptions. Your understanding of the world is filled with information from your upbringing, bits and pieces from other places in addition to those written articles you have read and has snowballed into this large sphere of “knowledge” which combine to construct your views. This construct is “ideology.” All based on assumptions.

Sure there were private tutors here and there, but there were no Deaf schools to gather at: none. So what was to become of them once a deaf child was born? In essence, they’d be wandering aimlessly and mimicking the environment around them.

There is a public proposal to the signing community to establish a media center for the purpose of producing TV shows and movies to be distributed through the internet, iPods, cable as well as theaters showcasing the use of ASL as a human language and to redefine the 4-letter word DEAF. What does it really mean?

Many questions

Conrad watched this with his own eyes

Ideology is the problem.

How does one change ideology? In your social experiences as you were brought up, you produced meanings and values.

What comes to mind when you hear or read the word “deaf”? Why is it a popular belief that Deaf people have poor English skills? Why are the majority of deaf people assisted with Social Security Income? Why is the federal government spending millions on “hearing loss” research?

His learned values of speech, of what were right and wrong and interpreted this behavior as deviant according to the understanding that was instilled into him. This contradiction came into being because of his ideological perspective. Was this perspective a fault of his? Who knows?

More questions

How could he possibly know the proper way to view them?

What is the significance of meanings and values?

Why is learning sign language a multi-million dollar industry for hearing people while Deaf babies are refused access to the language that is most natural to them? Why did it take Gallaudet University 143 years to embrace a bilingual mission incorporating ASL and English in the academics? Why has there been a 150-year long international campaign to rid the world of deaf people? Deaf babies born around the world are receiving cochlear implants at an exponential rate.

He interpreted this behavior the only way he understood it, and put it into words. He was not the only one who did so. There were several others as well. For instance, in 1653 John Wallis published a booklet on how to train the deaf to speak. There were several others just like him.

Let’s take the word “earth” for instance. What do you think of when you hear or read this word? Where you live, the smell of the air, the forest: there’s a wide variety of things connected to the word “earth.” When it comes to values, this could vary widely. Some would care heavily about it and others would not. This is the framework of meanings and values.

The answer: Ideology.

Remember

Representation

Ideology is the dimension of social experience in which meanings and values are produced.

This is the key: RE-PRESENTATION. Seeing it, visualizing it, interpreting it and documenting it. This documentation is distributed through society into public awareness. Another person would read this document and redistribute it through their own cycle and so on. The cycle continues with no end.

This framework is a system of representation. What is the significance of this system? It’s called culture. To change ideology, you must change the representation.

John Conrad Amman, M.D.

• Solomon Alterti 1591

• G. Bonifacio- 1616

• Joan Pablo Bonet- 1620

• John Bulwer- 1648, 1654

• John Wallis- 1653

• George Delgarno- 1680

• Johann Conrad Amman- 1694, 1700

One instance of representation is term “deaf.” Once a deaf baby is born, it doesn’t hear. That’s a fact: a biological fact. What does the fact that the baby can’t hear actually mean? That it’ll grow up “isolated?” Is that really the case? That thought is created by ideology.

published a book in 1700 describing how to train deaf children to speak orally. In his book, he used the following words to describe deaf people: “How dull are they in general! How little do they differ from animals! How inadequate and defective is the language of gestures and signs which they must use! Who does not pity their wretched condition?

Reading Conrad’s words may upset you.

Documents like these have been passed through generation after generation and are given to you today

Before we change representations, one must understand what a sign entails and how the meanings affixed to signs brought us here.

However, hold your blame for a moment. Imagine yourself in the 1700’s. In 1760, 60 years later, the first class of Deaf students was initiated by Abbe de l’Epee of which Laurent Clerc later attended. That was in 1760. Prior to that time, there was no formal education, no formal training, signing, or a place for deaf children to socialize: none.

Re-Presenting

Deaf

A French intellectual, Michel Foucault

The “Wild Boy of Aveyron” named Victor was discovered, taken in and studied from 1801- 1805by Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, Chief Physician at the National Institution for Deaf-Mutes. Victor lived his life in the woods with animals. He could hear and speak but wasn’t considered “hearing.” He didn’t speak like the majority, or understand the majority. They tried to train Victor to speak and communicate, but it was unsuccessful.

Ferdinand de Saussure, dubbed as the Father of 20th Century Linguistics, mapped out signs into two parts: the signifier and the signified.

. . studied the relationship between power and institutions established in the 18th to 19th centuries. He concluded that human bodies became the site of a battlefield. Authorities claimed the mind and body. Remember the Wild Boy? He was taken, studied and worked on by Itard, without his consent. Itard controlled him.

Signifer/ Signified

"deafness"

Deaf people remember

A signifier is the symbol expressed in a language such as the spoken or signed word “Earth.” Take “Earth” to mean a globe of water: what is what the word signifies. Another example: “the Earth is flat.” Earth is the signifier and the image of a boat sailing off the edge of the earth would be the “signified.” A signifier + the signified = a sign.

This particular training was applied towards the deaf students at the institute for deaf-mutes. That led to the concept of “deafness.”

. .the speech therapy they experienced as they grew up. Therapists grabbed and moved their face. Parents and teachers sent Deaf children to doctors to do work on their ears. They put things in their ears, moving their head around. This is called “normalizing judgment.”

Deaf people have been around for thousands of years. However deafness as a major medical study began 200 years ago. How did “deafness” come about? Itard performed tests on deaf students. He would make a loud sound and the student would raise their hands when they heard it. Itard documented all of this and worked with one deaf student after another. This was the first time that “ranges of hearing” became visible.

The goal of normalizing judgment is if the person is not doing as the controller says they are disciplined, given consequences until they are finally under the control of the controller. This method was brought into many teaching colleges, intended to be instilled into potential teachers. It soon became standard practice.

The visual image of “Earth” has changed over time. People once thought Earth was flat. The word “Earth” remained but the image of it changed from flat to round. A rocket ship took images of the planet from above and saw that it was an actual living organism.

February 1808

The image of doctors with white coats and stethoscopes became a powerful ideological symbol.

As you can see, what is signified changes over time. That’s why people say language is a living thing. Language always grows and changes. If you compared the old perspective and the current perspective of sign language you will see that it has changed as well. How did that come about?

Itard delivered two memoirs to the society of the Faculty of Medicine titled “On the means of Providing Hearing to Deaf-Mutes” and “On the Means of Providing Speech to Deaf-Mutes.” These two memoirs created something of a sensation and attracted the attention of the society.

The birth of deafness

Apotheosis (Divination) of Medical Personage:

Fauchet 1790: “We proceed tentatively with our words; they soar with their signs.”

This is how the birth of deafness came about and this coincided with oral education. Itard was known as the father of audiology.

Doctors = Father, God

During the mid-17th century, philosophers held sign language in high regard. It was suggested that every Parisian should learn to sign. At that time, sign language represented truth, nature and the divine. All this changed within the next few decades.

The point is this:

“Sign Language is a natural and true human language. What happened?”

In regards to meanings, what did “deafness” mean at that time? An abnormality: something that needed to be fixed. Remember what the French thought about sign language? It was highly regarded. The perspective that deaf people needed to be fixed tore down that high regard like a sinking ship. Sign language had lost its spotlight.

The marriage of medico-pedagogy (medicine and education locked the very definition of “deaf.” People came to see deafness as an abnormality that needed to be fixed.