Posts Tagged: dichotomy

Capital / Culture / Education — 2 Comments
30
Jun 11

Requiem Mass

The road in the death valley

While the unfinished Requiem Mass by Mozart in D Major plays in the background, the telephone rings. My partner, Marco, picks up the phone. “Can I speak to Mr. Walker?” It was a forced jovial voice.

“I am afraid John can’t come to the phone, although he is here. He is deaf. Would you like me to pass on a message for you, or I could relay the conversation between you and him?”

“Oh, I am so sorry for you news,” came the sympathetic tones.

“I said, deaf not dead. John can’t hear.”

“I am so very sorry.”

There must be a few companies out there who think I have passed away. Will I be waiting for someone to come round with a bunch of flowers or a card of sympathy? Or be stopped at the immigration desk asking if I am the real John Walker.

Yes, deaf and death are homophones to a lazy speaker who would pronounce ‘th’ with a ‘f.’ But this phonological analysis only scratches the surface, there is a cultural reality of how ‘deaf’ is perceived.

My Grandmother was at her deathbed. She lay in coma after a heart attack and two successive strokes; the doctor prepared us to expect her life to come to an end. She was 78 years old and lived a good life. She was the oldest of 7 siblings and was the family matriarch.

I was told by the doctor, as I sat beside her, that I should speak to her. Puzzled, I asked why. It is thought that hearing is the last sense to go, she might be able to hear our conversations and words of reassurance. When my parents left the room to get a cup of coffee, I stayed behind and spoke of the memories we had and the things we did as a family, only to clammer up when they returned; I felt embarrassed. You must remember that I was only 19 years old at the time and it was bizarre to talk to someone who couldn’t respond.

The idea of sound and hearing being the final frontier of human existence places a lot of emphasis on the relationship between hearingness, or the lack of it, and the impending death. The statistics are quite strong, 2/3 of over 75 year olds have a hearing loss. A large proportion of the 4 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the country are elderly. There are several conditions that give rise to hearing loss, such as osteoporosis; the weakening of the bones such as those in the middle ear that lose efficiency to transmit sounds to cochlear.

It does make me wonder why people refer to deafness as a ‘serious condition’. The loss of hearing, in mid life, coincides with the loss of family, work, social networks and relationships. This ongoing chain of consequences, when one’s life breaks down, leads to a sensation of a downward spiral closer to the ‘final conclusion’. It must be terrifying and haunting to have a hearing loss as the doorway to one’s mortality.

A friend who worked at M&S noticed a difference in the customers’ reactions. When she didn’t understand a customer, she says “Hi, I’m deaf, can you say that again?” The customer just ups and walks. Her strategy was to change what she says, “Hi, I can’t hear very well, can you say that again?” And the customer stays. Deaf doesn’t only mean dead but also dead end. There is a deep reference in society about how one reacts to the word. If the common reference to deaf-life is over the age of 65, is it not surprising?

Even some parents of newly born deaf children associate deafness with mortality. When the parents receive news from their child’s neonatal hearing test, they react with shock when they realise the child they had is not the child they have now. In a sense, the previous child ‘died’ and there is a different child in front of them. It takes time to get their head around the idea that they have a beautiful child with a promising future.

There is something important about bringing a child to life, there is a process of preparing that child for adulthood in order to set them free into society. Free to influence the world as they see fit. This is what happens to those children who seek opportunities, including opportunities in the Deaf community. They realise their social capital as bilingual/bicultural individuals who can function in both the Deaf and hearing worlds.

My previous thoughts about the insider and outsider dichotomy shows here too. Society considers deafness as a loss of capital, a loss of worth, whereas Deaf people see deafness as a capital gain, an increase of worthiness. This is where the conflict reigns. I, for one, am not prepared to live my life with my own mortality as a constant reference point, I am here to live just as I am.

I go to the radio playing the Requiem and give Marco a sharp look, I switch it off. “Another few more years before we get to this stage.”

Photo by s.alt
Capital / Education — 2 Comments
25
Jun 11

The Insider/Outsider Dichotomy

Inside/Outside

If you have ever been to Florence, you would be in awe of its splendour. It is the city of Dante (The Divine Comedy), Michelangelo (Statue of David) and Leonardo da Vinci (The Mona Lisa). With Ponte Vecchio and the little shops selling gold at one end and the majestic Basillica di Santa Croce on the other.

But if you ask my partner, Marco, you will realise that the perceptions of Florence, from the cultural tourist to the inhabitants of the town, couldn’t be more different. The 360° art and history left no space for anything else. Young Florentines had very few leisure activities, it was a rather restrictive place to live in.

This is the dichotomy I want to express here. How a city, in its cultural galore and reknown heritage, is actually rather oppressive. I know Marco would interject to say, “but its my City, I’m proud of where I was brought up.” But the young Marco would tell a different story. It is amazing how one place can create two very different experiences. In particular, the perspectives of those who live in the city and those who perceive the city from the outside.

In the Deaf community, we have a similar problem. There is a dichotomy between the views of the insider and that of the outsider.

I have to start with the obvious dichotomy to consider. The perspectives on ‘deafness’ itself creates a dichotomy. My colleagues in the department of Life Sciences would defend the view that deaf people naturally want to be cured, because it is an obvious consequence of putting right something that is wrong (define wrong, I would say!). But, in reality, many deaf people are not that bothered. This outsider perception belongs to hearing people and it is projected onto deaf people. But the insider view is more concerned with life opportunities to be educated, work, have a family and buy a home (ie. equality of opportunity). The chasm between the two perspectives are held apart by language – one would never understand the other unless they are bilingual and bicultural.

I am faced with this dichotomy with other researchers interested in community engagement. Most of my colleagues were not members of the communities they are researching on, they hold an outsider perspective. The first questions they ask is “who am I and what potential harm can I do just by being here.” Essentially, this ethical discussion takes the position of the observer.

But as an insider to the Deaf community, I can’t be an observer. I cannot shift from socialising in the community at the weekend and then withdraw for the purpose of observation during the week; my friends would look at me with raised eyebrows. Instead, I am a mediator between the passions of the community and the aims of the research. I empower the community to become the researchers themselves and devolve the authorship to them (ie. shared ownership). Their journey through the activities become the outcomes of the research.

As you can imagine, it is hard for outsider and insider researchers to come together and share points of views. I think they are too far removed and it effects the validity of the data, and they think I am too close to the subject matter and potentially influence the data. This dichotomous relationship brings two research paradigms alive. There should be space, with different methodology, for insider and outsider research.

I have been supporting a PhD student who has identified a similar insider/outsider issue. He discovered that mainstream education, known as inclusive education, was in fact exclusive in practice. Deaf children are more likely to experience exclusion from their education and isolation from social activities. Alternatively, children in specialist education found themselves in a more inclusive environment to prepare the student for life outside of the school, but this type of school is considered exclusive. The insider/outsider relationships create a discontinuous problem from theory/philosophy to its implementation.

Recently, I was in a conversation with a CEO of an organisation who remarked that the politicalisation of Deaf people is a source of problems in the field of deafness. The reality is that different organisations/Government agencies have been playing with insider/outsider politics for quite a while, and there is a lot of evidence of the fall out.  The Deaf community only had two responses available to them: become a subaltern (people devoid of a political voice, without the possibility to have that voice) or create a political response to reassert the balance between the insiders and outsiders. The former has been our historical legacy and epitomised in the 1945-1970 period in education when pure oralism was widely practiced. The latter resurfaced after 100 years of oppression and resulted with the assertion of political voice in the 1970s (eg. NUD).

This discussion leaves me in awe of the Michelangelo’s work. The statue of David stands tall (17 foot high) above the people, craning their necks and shielding from the sunlight in Piazza della Signoria. It is a juxtaposition between the real and the imagined. David was suppose to be boy-sized but Michaelangelo wanted to bring the spirit of David alive, at the towering height of Goliath. The sculptor was bringing the inside out for all to see.

Photo by yourbartender; Art by Harri and de Ville de Goyet, Nimetön #3