Hi, everyone. I'm a geography Ph.D. student at the Ohio State University, and I'd like to share something relevant to the members of this forum.
You fine critical geographers are probably aware of the recent fiasco involving a fraudulent and incompetent interpreter at Mandela's memorial service. As a sign language interpreter myself with close ties to the Deaf community, I wanted to take this opportunity to emphasize the importance of recognizing deafness and Deaf identity as vectors of social difference.
We in the interpreting and Deaf community are outraged over this situation. But we also know that this is only one example of what Deaf individuals deal with on a regular basis. For those of us in academic institutions, we often feel doubly frustrated that so little academic work on social difference and oppression includes examples from the Deaf community. It is assumed today that critical scholars are sensitive to heteronormativity, racism and sexism – yet when some of us mention deafness, we get a lot of blank stares and responses like, "well... I don't do disability studies." Yet critical geographers, more than most, do have the skills to think about all forms of oppression even if you aren't familiar with deafness in particular. Years of forced sterilizations, physical and sexual abuse, employment discrimination, the prohibition of sign languages in many parts of the world, and the illegal imprisonment of Deaf persons because they were assumed "insane" have left their mark on this rich community. I hope we don't write this powerful history out of our discussions of difference. I encourage us to try to recognize and include narratives, histories, and geographies of the Deaf community in our thinking about social difference.
As an interpreter, I often feel at the margins of social events, as if what I'm doing is either "beautiful sign language", or a bunch of "mere gesturing". Interpreting is a difficult and valuable skill that is made most visible when it breaks down, as the situation in South Africa illustrates. On behalf of all interpreters everywhere, please do us the good service of standing up for the universal right to language access for all.
Thank you.
