Hi Lennard (and everyone else believe it or not!)
>
>OK, I think we need a moment of levity here. What strikes me as funny is
>that this debate began when someone on the list suggested I debate Singer.
>I said I would love to, and I've ended up debating you instead. I think
>that's pretty funny. So, the first thing I want to do is add you to the my
>PR list of debaters and speakers. I should have done so earlier, but
>clearly you are up there with arguers.
I'm flattered but I don't do Singer OK - I know my limits, which might
include not being an ethicist but also being too old - or too young?!
>
>I'll copy the letter I sent you at the time:
>
>Hi Mairian,
>
>I'm reading your DEAF AND DISABLED and enjoying it. But I wanted to
>complain about your treatment of me. You use me as the guy who said "You
>are either disabled or you are not." That is kind of unfair since what I
>said was that "The term 'disability,' as it is commonly and professionally
>used, is an absolute category." I don't say that "I" use it that way, and
>indeed I follow that statement with the caution "One must view with
>suspicion any term of such Procrustean dimensions," and I describe it as "a
>concept with such a univalent stranglehold o meaning must contain within it
>a dark side of ower, control, and fear."
>I thought it was pretty clear
>that the point of my book is to debunk such an arbitrary binary. So, in
>your book you set me up as the straw guy who thinks that "you're either
>disabled or you are not."
>
Umm, no, to me it is not clear at all. The exact text of my understanding
of your work on categories and binaries in my book (p.35) is as follows:
"The inherent tensions of thinking in terms of absolute 'truths' and
essentialist grand theories are evidence throughout the literature on
deafness and disability, and many commentators seem to have difficulty with
their own quests for definitive answers. For example, Lennard Davis (1995)
on the one hand suggests that disability is an absolute category - 'one is
either disabled or not' - and, on the other that:
'disability is not an object - a woman with a cane - but a social process
that ultimately involves everyone who has a body and lives in the world of
the senses. Just as the conceptualisation of race, class and gender shapes
the lives of those who are not black or female, so the concept of
disability regulates the bodies of those who are 'normal' . Normalcy and
disability are part of the same system.'
Likewise, Padden and Humphries (1998) make a strong case for Deaf (BD)
people's cultural uniqueness, and their definition of Other as 'hearing'
(though not in the sense of being able to hear sound, since Deaf (BD) and
hearing are cultural categories). Their argument is placed eithin an
implict narrative of nature-nurture, and questions are asked about whether
one must be born into Deaf (BD) culture or whether one can grow into it....
(and this continues over the page)"
In other words, as I keep saying, I find what you write inconsistent and
sometimes contradictory, but I also indicate that this is part of a general
tension in social theory and contextualise it with other examples from the
literature (which I actually give more space to). I am suggesting that
though you argue against binaries, you also set them up by emphasising
difference, particularly the differance between Deaf (BD) and disabled.
This is complicated by the differences between US and UK theorising and
when you talk about disability, you are describing what we call impairment,
as indicated in paul Abberley's review of 'The Disability Reader.'
>
>I'm not sure if this debate is of any interest to anyone
>besides you and me. I don't want to take up the time and energy of the
>list with our disagreements if there is no general interest or if people
>want to move on.
Not that long ago, Lawrence Bathurst wrote that he felt the 'Deaf/deaf'
issue was something that we needed to address because it was some sort of
key that might unlok a few doors in disability studies (am I right
Lawrence?). I think like most contributors to this list, there are things
that interest me and things that don't. I make use of the delete button. At
the same time, I'm very happy to deal with enquiries off-list, and I have
been doing over the last week on this issue.
>
>I'd like to recount something anecdotally that tells me that your, and
>others, insistance on some kind of tally or testimony of disability status
>is not a good idea. I've asked my graduate course on disability to sign
>onto this list (Hello class!) and their reaction to this debate has been
>instructive.
>Two students mentioned that they felt that they should resign
>from the list because they were not disabled. This, to me, is exactly what
>we don't want. Isn't the goal of dis. studies and dis. activism to educate
>people to the extent that they accept disability studies and disability
>activism as actually about themselves? Their relation to the body, civil
>rights, human rights, injustice, etc.?
Lennard, you consistently confuse inclusion and leadership. I've said it so
often that I'm exhausted with saying it - I am not trying to exclude
non-disabled people from participation in disability studies. I am trying
to ensure that the agendas of disability studies are set by disabled people
however in exactly the same way that various feminist agendas are set by
women. Non-disabled leadership distorts our arguments and plays into those
of our oppressors. I'm very sorry that we are not going to get the full
benefits of your 'instruction' by your students directly. But to the
students who want to resign, I say, hang on in there. Debates are part of
academic and social life, and I am choosing to debate with Lennard in text
because it is the only way I can conduct unmediated debate with him. But
never underestimate how direct experience of oppression moulds lives and
political beliefs in exactly the same way that wealth and greed do, and I
am emphatically not assigning value judgements of 'positivity' and
'negativity' to the identities that are formed. This point seems to me to
be critical to the understanding of disability and if that point is
difficult to grasp, give it time.
>
>As for point 2--on Deafness and deafness. I've said on many occasions
>(most recently at the Smithsonian Institution's conference on disability
>and history which had a good attendance by Deaf and deaf people) that the
>problem we face in the US at least is that the Deaf community is ableist
>and the disability community is audist. The Deaf community is ableist
>because, as you said, it accepts the dominant notion of disability or
>impairment as a negative. But, likewise, the disability community is
>audist in the sense that it hasn't, by and large, engaged much in the Deaf
>World and its issues. Both sides have much to learn and gain from each
>other. I do also recognize that non-signing and/or hard of hearing people
>have not been well served by the Deaf community. Here, again, is the
>difficulty of claiming that disability or deafness is one thing.
>
Since I am very much dependent on what you have written rather than what
you have said, I cannot be held responsible for any gaps in my knowledge
about what you may or may not think, especially given the distance between
us. However, I do feel that to make totalising statements about the -isms
of the respective communities treads a dangerous path. Again, on the basis
of texts, the evidence suggests that Deaf (BD) Studies not only wishes to
distance itself from Disability Studies, but actively oppresses deaf (SD)
scholars (in some cases to the point of direct violence against them), and
perpetuates disabling attitudes against people with 'other' impairments.
The examples are too numerous to quote here (and too depressing). The only
recent texts I can think of which don't reinforce this binary are Owen
Wrigley's text 'The Politics of Deafness', which I think is an excellent
book, not least because of its exposition of Majority World perspectives,
and (almost) Brenda Brueggemann's book 'Lend me Your Ear: Rhetorical
Constructions of Deafness'.
The same is not true for Disability Studies. Most of the Disability Studies
texts I have scrutinised in the last few years include many references to
Deaf (BD) people and sign language, and none to deaf people who use other
forms of communication, nor sustained analysis or attention to practice in
relation to these groups. It is assumed that deaf (SD) is both 'unclear and
unclean'. SDS in Washington demonstrated its inclusionary attitude towards
Deaf (BD) people in its decision to invite a Deaf (BD) speaker to give the
main plenary, and look at what happened.
I am all for dialogue with Deaf people, as opposed to dialectics, but I
feel that moving forward means acknowledgement of certain facts about the
current relationships of power, privileging, language, and mediated lives,
and attempting to address these. From a Disability Studies perspective, the
same can be said about disabled people's relationships with 'normates', and
people who are differently raced, gendered or sexualised.
I rest my case (for the moment!).
Best wishes
Mairian
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies
Department of Education Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
email: [log in to unmask]
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