Daniel Tannen
ENGL 306 Rhetoric of Protest
2 November, 2016
Historical and Rhetorical Drafts
A History of Deaf Oppression
The
oppression of deaf individuals is not a novel issue, but rather an extensive
institutional and individual prejudice that has taken place for centuries. The problem with such oppression is that it is
constant and not always blatant; it can range from awkward public encounters to
overt discrimination disguised as medical treatment. From the Feudal Community
in the middle ages to Alexander Graham Bell and the rise of cochlear implant
technology, oppression has been ever present for the deaf community.
The
idea of ‘disability’ in classification of the deaf, blind, crippled, deformed
or mentally unstable was introduced during the rise of the Feudal Community in
the Middle Ages. One’s worth to society and responsibility to provide for the
community were ideas that shaped the rejection and banishment of some deaf
individuals especially in areas that saw widespread improvements in
literacy. Other areas, such as the
non-literate agricultural communities, saw deaf people flourish as success was
based on skill, not literacy (Branson 5). However, the bubonic plague in the
fourteenth century put those literate individuals into the street and thus,
“the ‘able-bodied’ poor beggars had the advantage, driving the ‘disabled’
further into poverty” (Branson 7). As Capitalism, individualism and the notions
of democracy gave rise to individual power and justification for such
prejudice, discrimination was born (Branson 10). The most concentrated
embodiment of discrimination against the deaf community came from the education
system. While some institutions such as Mr. Bartlett’s Family School for Young
Deaf-Mute Children provided an atmosphere of encouragement via inclusion of
both hearing and deaf pupils, some schools were blatantly offensive; Frederick
Knapp’s school in 1877 shamed any student caught signing by making them wear
gloves in order to recognize “punishment and stupidity” (quoted by Cerny 11).
In Milan, Italy, 1880, the exclusion of the deaf reached a climax: a conference
concerned with the education of the deaf was called drawing educators primarily
from France, Italy and America. The Milan conference was run primarily by
hearing individuals that did not sympathize with the deaf community and pushed
for communication without sign language.
The papers published disregarded the idea of deaf culture and “called
for a total ban on sign language, believing the use of signs was a barrier to
deaf people learning speech and becoming normal citizens” (Cerny 12).
There
was no greater advocate of the ideologies put forth by the Milan conference
than Alexander Graham Bell. Mainstream history celebrates Bell “for his
telephone invention and spawning a revolution in the telecommunications
industry” (Greenwald 150). Yet, in a portion of his dissertation, Brian H.
Greenwald also refers to Bell as a “tyrant, guilty of committing ‘linguistic
and cultural genocide’ against the Deaf community” (137). Alexander Graham Bell
was born into a wealthy family lead by deaf educator and father, Alexander
Melville Bell. The Bell family was concerned with assisting deaf children with
speech and encouraging lip-reading without the use of sign language (Cerny 11).
Motivated by a deaf mother and wife, Alexander Graham Bell argued against the
use of sign language in order to apply the ideas put forth by the Milan
conference and recent scientific theories with the goal of improving the deaf
community. However, the more radical opinions were so strongly based in the
newly coined concept of eugenics that many classify Bell as the “most feared
enemy of the American Deaf” (quoted by Cerny 12). Eugenics was the term used to
describe selective breeding that would discourage mating between two unfit
organisms and encourage procreation between the most successful ones (Greenwald
139). The idea was sinister yet still
drew upon sound scientific theories such as heredity and evolution put forth by
Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin, respectively {INSERT FOOTNOTE WITH MORE
INFORMATION HERE}. Instead of scientific
basis, eugenic principles were introduced to selectively breed humans to
accelerate the appearance of a desired trait and drive the evolutionary loss of
any other trait; an idea strikingly similar to radical German Nazism (Branson
29). In Bell’s papers, he cautions the marriage of deaf individuals on the premise
of genetic characteristics even though his research could not conclude genetic
correlation between deaf parents and deaf offspring (Greenwald 140). Branson recognizes that Bell’s position was a
focus on “increasing the number and proportion of desirables born in successive
generations of the population” (quoted in Branson 31), but it is easy to see
the sense of prejudice felt by the deaf community. The idea of ‘fixing’
deafness was profound in the early 1900s as scientific progress exploded.
As
the Civil Rights Movement began to show signs of progress, the deaf community
began to fight the overt institutional oppression through their own protests.
In 1977, Tom Humphries coined the term audism defining it as “the notion that
one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or behave in the manner of one
who hears” (Eckert 105). Just as the
concept of combatting racism was understood and agreed upon by the African
American community, the prejudice, bias and oppression of audism was familiar
to most deaf individuals. In the 1960s and 1970s, deaf individuals had unequal
access to telephone services and lack of access to television services, “an
equally important communication medium” (Strauss 3). Even after improvements in
telecommunications, deaf individuals were patronized with services and special
products that did not meet the standard enjoyed by the greater public (Strauss
4). In addition, it seemed that deaf students at Gallaudet University were
experiencing some representational oppression: as the previous president of the
university retired, the board was responsible for picking a new president and
initially picked a hearing president among a plethora of eligible deaf
candidates. The culmination of frustrations of deaf students and faculty was
seen in the “Deaf President Now!” protest at Gallaudet University in
Washington, D.C. to bring awareness to institutional audism and force the board
to pick a capable deaf president (Christiansen viiii).
Novel
legislature, including equality in telecommunications and the Americans with
Disabilities Act in 1990, and a strong voice for protesting deaf rights
gradually improved the lives of deaf individuals by promoting equal access and
representation (Strauss 4). Beneath the social progress, researchers were
developing a device capable of restoring hearing via electrical stimulation:
the cochlear implant (Waltzman 8). A
cochlear implant is a medical device that is surgically implanted in the skull
of a deaf individual in order to stimulate the auditory nerve and produce
sound. The auditory microphone sits on
the outside of the ear and transmits electromagnetic frequencies wirelessly to
an internal receiver/stimulator that is permanently attached to the outside of
the skull but beneath the skin. The
receiver/stimulator sends electric signals to the cochlea via a surgically
implanted wire to mimic the sound “heard” by the external microphone (Roland
118). Although a medical marvel, there
is much controversy surrounding implementation in young deaf children; the invention
of cochlear implants presented an ethical dilemma that questioned deafness,
deaf culture and what it means to be disabled.
Deaf Identity and the Sociopolitical
Arguments Opposed to Cochlear Implants
There
are essentially two common perspectives on deafness: disability or linguistic
minority (Bramwell 222). Feeding into
the opinion of disability is the premise that deafness is a condition “that
warrants medical and biotechnological intervention,” with the purpose of
absolving the problem (Mauldin 156). Such individuals and institutions focus on
medical definitions to define and characterize deaf individuals in similar
categories as the blind and handicapped. Those whose perspective on deafness is
one of a linguistic minority argue that deafness is simply a social structure
defined by diversity (Mauldin 155). Such
arguments mark the foundations for both the Speech and Hearing Symposium and
Audism Free America. However, an understanding of Deaf identity and culture is
essential to grasp the emotional and political significance of the Omni Hotel
protests.
Key
concepts and terminology are defined in order to familiarize the reader with
opinions of the deaf and medical communities.
One of the most significant words in the vocabulary of deaf rights
activists is audism. Like racism, the word ‘audism’ caps every oppressive experience
and prejudiced event into a familiar concept. Coined by Tom Humphries in the
1970s, audism has exposed the “beliefs and behaviors that assume the
superiority of being hearing over being Deaf” (H-Dirksen 240). Audism has been recognized as being
individual, institutional, metaphysical and laissez-faire (Eckert 101). This
paper focuses primarily on the institutional audism of the educational system
and the laissez-faire audism present in the medical system. For example, audism recognized the practices
of ‘oralism’ and ‘mainstreaming’ imposed on young individuals in the deaf
school system. Oralism is the term used to describe a method of teaching deaf
children through lessons on lip-reading and vocalization without manual
language intervention (Cerney 11). Oralism was the result of the Milan
Conference that sought to ban sign language and re-establish deaf children as
“normal citizens” (Cerney 12). Mainstreaming was the term used to describe the
“practice of moving children from their special education classes for part of
the day and placing them in general education classes” (Cerney xiii). Both tactics were used in order to persuade
the growth of the deaf individual into one of a hearing person and thereby disturb
an important feature of the deaf culture: their language. Another term
necessary for the understanding of the frustrations of the AFA movement is
eugenics. Eugenics is the term coined in
1883 by Francis Galton to describe the improvement of English society by
selective human breeding particularly involved in procreation of intelligent
and successful people (Greenwald 139). The
connection to Alexander Graham Bell comes from a paper published in the same
year that outlined his thoughts concerning the intermarriage with Deaf people
that “dovetailed neatly with Galton’s ideas” (Greenwald 139). Bell and Galton
had an incomplete understanding of the basic principles of heredity and
evolution put forth by Mendel and Darwin respectively. Later, Bell attempted to
clarify his position on intermarriage by stating that he does not want to
interfere with the liberty of marriage, but that the knowledge about incidence
of deaf births would be available for deaf people to do with what they please
(Greenwald 140). The notion that the marriage between deaf individuals warrants
a higher rate of deaf births is incorrect outside of true congenital deafness; 90
percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents (Wrigley 25). The idea
that Bell was “deeply involved in eugenics” remains as a bitter note in the
memories of deaf individuals.
In
his book, A Place of Their Own, John
Van Cleve analyzes the importance of sign language among deaf culture stating,
“the associations, conventions, clubs, and marriages of deaf Americans
uniformly reflected the importance of sharing this communication method”
(106). The identity of the deaf is based
on their language; other cultural associations such as country of origin, cultural
food, or skin color are altogether irrelevant.
Their cultural heritage is sign language. Deaf individuals have even
classified the identity of deafness by assigning upper and lowercase versions
of the word Deaf/deaf. The goal of
the distinction is to differentiate those who simply have audiological
impairment versus those that are actively involved in the signing community
(Wrigley 14). The overarching culture surrounding deaf identity focuses on
altered normality instead of abrupt difference.
In A Lens on Deaf Identities, Irene
W. Leigh observes that deaf culture celebrates deafness by opposing the notion
that a child has “failed the hearing test.” Instead the “Deaf-World” encourages
the notion that a child has “passed the deaf test” (Leigh 14). Such regard for social inclusion based on
acceptance of sign language is paramount to deaf culture.
One
particularly strong and emotionally charged identity within the deaf community
is disability. Although some deaf
individuals have criticized medical and institutional agencies for categorizing
deafness as a disability, others acknowledge the “disabling component of not
hearing” (Leigh 18). Leigh continues to argue that this split within the deaf
community may be determined by the environment from which disability is only a
factor if equality is breached (18). However, the raw emotion behind disability
as an identity comes into play when medical professionals insist on fixing
deafness. After conquering oralism in
deaf schools and establishing equal access for deaf individuals in the way of
communication and social service, the introduction of cochlear implants
represents direct opposition against the progress made in favor of deaf
culture. Audism is still present and has been making an uprising that has been
disguised as medical treatment. Eckert
references an “auditory industrial complex (AIC) in which government agencies,
medical professionals and manufacturing corporations aggressively target Deaf
children for medical treatment through surgery or amplification” (107). In
reference to the surgical procedure, a member of the Alexander Graham Bell
Association said, “Some say there’s no such thing as a deaf child. Not if it’s
done right” (quoted by Wrigley 215).
Many deaf individuals do not view themselves as being disabled and so
the notion of having children cured of deafness by a surgical procedure is
disturbing to the deaf community. It is obvious to see the opposition against a
medical procedure designed to encourage speech recognition and vocalization and
thereby push aside the use of sign language.
Deaf
culture, deaf pride and frustrations against institutional audism are the
driving force behind the Audism Free America movement. The Audism Free America
mission is “To promote and protect the civil liberties of Deaf people and their
linguistic birthrights” (Audism Free America). Therefore, the support of the
Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Listening and Spoken Language
Symposium (comprised of cochlear implant technologies) was in direct conflict
with what the AFA stands for. The goal of cochlear implants, medically
speaking, is to facilitate stimulation of the auditory nerve via the cochlea for
the purpose of bypassing some physiological dysfunction and enabling “near normal
speech production and understanding” (Eisen 1). However, when viewed within the
context of deaf identity, it is obvious to see how support of cochlear implants
can be seen as harmful to the deaf community. The integration of cochlear
implants in young children and infants is an example of “Deaf people {being}
physically and pedagogically coerced into adopting hearing norms, whether they
wanted to or not” (H-Dirksen 241). The opinions of the AFA movement and the
AGBA consider the ethical dilemma faced by parents of young deaf children: being
torn by cultural identity and medical authority.
Works
Cited
AudismFreeAmerica.
"AUDISM FREE AMERICA." : July 2013. N.p., 01 Jan. 1970.
Web. 12 Oct. 2016.
Bramwell,
Ros, Harrington, Frank, and Harris, Jennifer. “Deafness – disability or
linguistic minority?” British Journal of Midwifery, vol 8.,
no. 4. 2013.
Branson,
Jan, and Miller, Don. Damned for Their Difference : The Cultural
Construction of Deaf People as Disabled
: A Sociological History. Washington, US: Gallaudet University
Press, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 25 October 2016.
Cerny,
Janet. Deaf Education in America Voices
of Children from Inclusion Settings. Gallaudet University Press. Washington, D.C.
2007.
Christiansen,
John B, and Barnartt, Sharon N. Deaf
president now: the 1988 revolution at Gallaudet University. Gallaudet
University Press. Washington, D.C. 1995.
Christiansen,
John B, and Leigh, Irene. Cochlear
implants in children: ethics and choices. 2002. Ebrary. Web.
Eckert,
Rowley. “Audism: A Theory and Practice of Audiocentric Privelege.” Humanity
& Society, vol. 37, no. 2, 2013, pp. 101-130.
Eisen,
Marc D. “History of the Cochlear Implant.” Cochlear
Implants, edited by Susan B. Waltzman, Thieme Medical Publishers, 2014, pp.
118-127.
Greenwald,
Brian H. "Taking Stock: Alexander Graham Bell and Eugenics,
1883-1922." The Deaf History Reader,
edited by John Vickrey Van Cleve, Gallaudet University Press, 2007, pp.
136-132.
H-Dirksen
L. Bauman. “Audism: Exploring the Metaphysics of Oppression.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, vol.
9, no. 2, 2004, pp. 239-246.
Hull,
Raymond H., ed. Aural rehabilitation. Singular Publishing Group, 1992.
James,
Susan Donaldson, and Huang, Grace. “Deaf and Proud to Use Sign Language.” ABC News. 12 December, 2006.
Kolb,
Rachel. “The Deaf Body in Public Space.” The
New York Times. 28 December, 2016.
Leigh,
Irene W. A Lens on Deaf Identities. Oxford
University Press, New York, 2009.
Mauldin,
Laura. Made to Hear : Cochlear Implants
and Raising Deaf Children. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2016. Ebook Library. Web. 25 Oct. 2016.
Mauldin,
Laura. “Precarious Plasticity: Neuropolitics, Cochlear Implants, and the
Redefinition of Deafness.” Science,
Technology & Human Values, vol. 39, no. 1, 2014, pp. 130-156
Ringo,
Allegra. "Understanding Deafness: Not Everyone Wants to Be 'Fixed'"The
Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 9 Aug. 2013. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.
Roland,
Peter S., and Roland Jr., Thomas. “Cochlear Implant Surgical Technique.” Cochlear Implants, edited by Susan B.
Waltzman, Thieme Medical Publishers, 2014, pp. 118-127.
Strauss,
Karen Peltz. A New Civil Right –
Telecommunications Equality for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Americans. Gallaudet
University Press. Washington, D.C. 2006.
Van
Cleve, John Vickrey and Barry A. Crouch. A
Place of Their Own Creating the Deaf Community in America. Gallaudet
University Press, Washington, D.C., 1989.
Walsh,
Kathy. “New Cochlear Implant Technology Gives Deaf People A ‘New Ear.’” CBS
Denver. 6 January, 2016.
Waltzman,
Susan B.; Roland, J. Thomas. Cochlear
Implants. New York: Thieme Medical Publishers, 2014. Ebook Library. Web. 25
Oct. 2016.
Wrigley,
Owen. The politics of deafness. Washington,
D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1996.
Questions:
1. What
do the terms ‘audism’ and ‘eugenics’ mean and what connections does the deaf
community draw from these terms to the Alexander Graham Bell Association?
2. How
might a deaf person see cochlear implants as a form of oppression as opposed to
simply a medical procedure to cure a disability? Can you see the correlation between rhetorical/historical analysis and where I am attempting to lead into with my artifact analysis?
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