Richard wrote (in part):
>
>
>I fear that your plans to write on the subject may take you from 'lurking'
>into a position that some of us (d.p.'s) are less sanguine about. I don't
>know why (not being an expert on those poor a.b.'s) but experience for many
>of us is Orwellian - some are more equal than others - the community still
>appears to find a.b. 'experts' far preferable to d.p. 'experts' (even though
>they have the same or better qualifications). And, once lauded as an
>'expert', humility appears to be the first casualty!
>
>For me, this is the central problem in the 'a.b. in disability studies'
>debate. it doesn't matter how reasonable, how measured d.p.'s response -
>experience (merely anecdotal and therefore empirically unsound I grant you -
>or are we into the oppression of research funding debate?) has shown that
>whilst d.p. provide a good visual clue when a.b.'s are engaged in 'good
>works', they are entirely unacceptable in any role that presumes to set them
>as 'equal'.
>
>I know the emancipatory/participatory arguments, but attempts at empowering
>d.p. through the work of a.b.'s has yet to reveal significant parity in
>outcomes for the d.p.'s that take part in research and the a.b. who does it.
>
>Before being further reviled, I should perhaps admit that, on an
>intellectual level, I am fine with a.b.'s in disability studies, so long as
>their work contributes to greater understanding of the oppression etc. etc.
>etc., but on a personal level, I long for the day when a d.p. can be seen as
>something other than a d.p.
>
Thank you for this Richard. You raise some important points about
'expertise'. Might I add a small anecdote of my own? When I headed up a
department in a college of adult education, these ideas about expertise
became very confused with ideas about access and support. For example, when
I attended meetings of senior managers, I was viewed as the 'expert' on
deaf education (not by choice I have to say and not in the view of the
majority of my staff - all 72 of them, mostly a.b.s who thought they were
the only experts). However, it became clear very rapidly that I couldn't
possibly have a view on anything else in their eyes, such as curriculum
development, applications for funding, cross college work and so on - you
know the catch phrase - "Well that's very interesting, but ... I'd rather
it was my idea!" That was the attitude.
At the other end, when I asked for 'support' it was automatically construed
that I meant 'communication support' (well I did need that, but that was in
hand) when what I actually wanted was an administrator who was responsible
to me, to be on par with my a.b. peers. The 'I want' and 'you need' debate
went on for months and months. Similarly 'management' to a.b.'s meant
'favouring the deaf (negative)' and management to deaf people meant
'favouring the deaf (positive)'. It didn't matter how fair I tried to be.
That reminds me of Jesse's point in an earlier post about the work we all
have to do. However, when a.b.'s are not prepared to understand
institutionalised oppression - and this to me is important because a.b.'s
*are* the powerholders in special education - this is the outcome and I
think sometimes it means that those of us who are prepared to fight it end
up being rather abrasive. Well your head would hurt if you bang it against
the proverbial brick wall for that long. So, I agree with you that by and
large a.b.'s cannot cope with d.p. leadership.
But there's another issue here too (sorry David) and that's language. This
links in to the 'hear, hear' thread, though I think some people genuinely
mis-spell it! My use of Butler connects to ritual - how language becomes
ritualised - because it is ritualised language forms that are most
injurious. By ritualised, I mean terms that are so much part of hegemony
that their use effects the 'loss of place' that Butler talks about. People
using the same terms but meaning different things is a problem only if
there is no dialogue or when one person's meaning is privileged in a way
that dis-embodies the other person's meaning - as is the case in the
example above. So, for example, when people say to me that I should
'discuss' or 'debate' a particular issue with a hearing person it sometimes
sends me into a panic because I know that discussion or debate will have to
take place in the hearing person's way, which is not my way. Therefore the
meaning of 'discussion' and 'debate' is very contingent, but we don't
always consciously realise this and we carry on discussions as if we mean
the same thing (though it's usually the a.b.'s meaning).
Dialogue is critical because we all make assumptions about people's
meaning, as many of the exchanges on this list show, and it takes a lot of
equally conscious activity to unlearn assumptions that are founded in
cultural ritual. When dialogue is consciously used to insist the d.p.'s
'way' goes against 'the norm', that doesn't leave the dialogue 'open' and
so it is very injurious to the d.p. So far as my own experience as a deaf
person is concerned, I would go a bit further and suggest that because
linguistic and knowledge impoverishment are, in *hegemonic* discourse,
associated with deafness, the injury experienced is far greater. For an
a.b. to suggest to a deaf person that 'they don't know what they're talking
about' sets into motion an unconscious train of thought that the deaf
person has often been conditioned by ritual to effect - something like: 'I
don't know what I'm talking about ... I'm being called stupid ... I'm dumb
.... deaf-and-dumb'. This leads to a temporary loss of identity (the deaf
person's) which is reinforced by the dismissal of any 'expertise' they
might have.
This kind of pattern constitutes institutionalised (indirect) oppression.
It is institutionalised because most a.b. people just don't accept that it
can injure as much as it does, nor why, because they see what they do as
benevolence to d.p. It has always been something of an irony to me that the
U.K. Disability Discrimination Act doesn't recognise a concept of
institutionalised discrimination in relation to disabled people, nor does
it attempt to define it, whereas our Sex and Race Discriminations Acts do.
Yet I sometimes think - as do Butler, Delgado & Stefancic, Whillock &
Slayden and many others - it does more ontological violence that physical
assault. As Dan Goodley says - labels have consequences.
Going back to my hole now ...
Best wishes
Mairian
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies
Department of Education Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Address for correspondence:
111 Balfour Road
Highbury
London N5 2HE
U.K.
Minicom/TTY +44 [0]171 359 8085
Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number)
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"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
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