Living as if we already know what ‘human’ will be: exploring the anticipated futures of visual/deaf humanity and how they shape the present
Dr Mike Gulliver, University of Bristol
Date: 20 November 2019
Time: 2.00–3.30pm
Place: EDEN Arbour room, Liverpool Hope University, UK
A post-deaf world would be celebrated by many. However, for some deaf people—those who see themselves not as disabled, but as a ‘people of the eye’ (Veditz 1910), who celebrate their natural, sign languages and their unique, signed cultures as the global heritage of a ‘visual form of humanity’ (Bahan 2011)—post-deafness represents a narrowing of humanity towards a less diverse, less creative, less… ‘human’ future. Even as the idealism of post-deafness is challenged, though, its inevitability is already being anticipated by policy makers. As it becomes common to assume that technologies are now available to help deaf people choose to become ‘hearing and speaking’ people, alternatives to a post-deaf reality become more and more difficult to imagine. This seminar explores post-deafness, to uncover how future visions of disability shape the present, and the tension between our agency to keep the future open, and the inertia of the ‘inevitable’.
Mike Gulliver is based at the University of Bristol and is affiliated with its department of Historical Studies and the Brigstow Institute. He is also affiliated with Heriot Watt University’s Centre for Translation, and its Intercultural Research Centre, and is a Trustee of the Deaf Studies Trust.
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