on 3/9/00 6:52 pm, Tanis M. Doe at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> What is interestng to
> me is that adults who want Cochlear Implants may have lost their hearing
> after acquiring a social identity as hearing person OR may have been
> raised as a oral deaf person or even a hard of hearing person. These
> adults MAY CHOOSE to have an implant as a consenting adults, much in the
> way some people as ADULTS choose to have sex reassignment surgeries,
> hormonal therapies or live as the "opposite" (not my choice of workds)
> sex.
I hope I'm not splitting hairs here Tanis, but all the groups you mention
tend not to be regarded by "dominant" big-Deaf people as part of the big
Deaf community. I think it's very important to emphasise that adult big-Deaf
people - that is people who have been raised in the big-Deaf community - are
also choosing to have implants, and when they do so, they are rejected by
the community. My understanding of the choices that are made in these cases
is that they are made not so much because the bi-Deaf person in question
chooses to abandon their community, nor because they want to 'become' a
hearing person (whatever that means), but because they want direct access to
the language(s) of hearing people. This is surely important if we are to
avoid essentialising particular categories, and I think it also troubles the
supposed binary relationship between biology and society as it is inscribed
in the small-d, big-D distinction.
>
> There is as
> much diversity in "deafness" range as there COULD be in "gender" if we
> stopped interpreting them as binary/polemic.
I'm a bit confused by this statement. Are you here comparing a biological
diversity with a social diversity? Do you mean that there is as much
diversity in 'deafness' (small d) as there is amongst women.
>
> I am very interested in how the psychiatric power enabled the Child
> Welfare people in the U S to intervene in a healthy (seemingly from the
> story) family.
Healthy in what sense? Physical, mental or something else?
> Would this also mean that a signing Deaf family raising
> their child to use sign language instead of getting an implant would be
> putting the child at risk?
Interestingly, in a recent government public consultation document on
pre-implantation genetic diagnosis in Britain, the signing Deaf family that
you mention was suggested as a special case in the sense that big-Deaf
parents could choose a big-Deaf embryo and reject a supposedly 'hearing'
embryo or an embryo that had been shown to carry the genes for 'serious'
disability. The document did not make this suggestion for any other
impairment group, which means presumably, that parents who are blind cannot
choose to have a blind child.
> Dogma is
> dogma is dogma. Lets try to actively resist the discourse of opposites
> and binaries.
>
Agreed!
Best wishes
Mairian
--
Mairian Corker
Visiting Senior Research Fellow
Language Group
School of Education
Kings College London
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