When most of us imagine an experiment, we imagine people dressed in white coats with subjects succumbing to their will. In reality, these tests are done under careful scrutiny and has a lengthy ethical review process. But there is a different type of experiment that doesn’t require subjects, it is a thought experiment.
One of the most famous thought experiments is Schrödinger’s Cat. It described a cat locked inside a metal box attached to a decaying atom. If the atom decayed, it would trigger a canister of hydrochloric acid to be released inside the box and the fumes would kill the cat. Because the decaying of the atom has a 50:50 chance that it could decay, or not; the state of atomic flux would also place the cat in the same flux. Hence, inside the box, the cat was both alive and dead at the same time. This is a scientific definition of a paradox.
If you get the experiment, great, but if you don’t, not to worry. The point is that the concept of paradox can be defined. A thought experiment creates an undeniable proof that does not need to be put into practice. Nobody wants to force a cat inside a metal box, neither should it happen. So, it stays as a thought experiment.
In my thought experiment, I want to give a group of people 100 gold coins. This group is going shopping. They can not buy anything, they can only purchase items from a given list that I have supplied. The only rule is that each person must be genuine and buy something that they will want/use.
The group must be a mixture of deaf and hearing people. In fact, the diversity of the group will come under four categories:
- A hearing person who only uses English.
- A deaf person who only uses English.
- A deaf person who only uses BSL.
- A deaf person fluent in both BSL and English.
- The entire works of Shakespeare.
- The music of Beethoven on CDs.
- Tickets to see the Swan Lake ballet.
- A guided tour around a national museum.
- A visit to the opera: Mozart’s last concerto.
- An invitation to the national Monarch or President’s meet and greet event.
- Tickets for the Deaf cruise, sailing through the Caribbean with 2000 Deaf people on the ship.
- Full video collection of sign language poems, such as Clayton Valli or Dot Miles.
- Entry to an event hosted by Signmark, a Deaf rapper.
- A day in the Deaf historical archives.
- A night out in the International Deaf Club.
- A Volunteer OverSeas trip to build a school for Deaf children.
You may have guessed that the former list represents what is known as culture with a capital ‘C’, or otherwise known as ‘higher culture’. The latter represents that cultural activities that would be of value to members of the Deaf community. One would assume that all items on the list are accessible to all people, therefore interpreter and captioning services would be available; the question is whether these four people would be interested to invest money in them.
The results could look something like this:
- A hearing person who only uses English. [100 gold coins spent]
- A deaf person who only uses English. [30 gold coins spent]
- A deaf person who only uses BSL. [70 gold coins spent]
- A deaf person fluent in both BSL and English. [100 gold coins spent]
The more one spends on the two lists, the more they are able to operate within the cultural norms of the worlds we live in (Deaf or non-deaf). The higher access and interest in these cultural items results with a person who has a higher level of cultural capital. Hence, a more culturally competent individual would be more successful financially and be more connected.
Bilingual Deaf people and a non-deaf person will always be able to spend the most, they will be the most culturally adept. At the other end of the scale, the deaf person who uses English as their only means of communication has so little cultural resources available to them. They feel on the ‘rim’ of both communities, or both worlds. Hence, they are least likely to be culturally mobilised, less socially connected and with lower economic power. The move to ‘normalise’ deaf people by offering resources to use their residual hearing as a route to equality is essentially flawed. It leaves a person who is not able to function in either Deaf or non-deaf worlds because they do not have the cultural resources available to them.
There is nothing paradoxical about this thought experiment but one can not escape that fact that the ‘normalisation agenda’ is a route to further segregation and exclusion; opposite to current thinking on ‘inclusion’. Like a cat in metal boxes sitting in a persistant state of flux: they are deaf-cum-hearing people but, at this point in time, neither of the two. The medical/educational agendas are creating social paradox, they are placing deaf people in a state of flux. This thought experiment has suddenly become very real.
