part 2 of hoichis critic of a hit propaganda piece.. this critique will be numbered and be in parts. 1-7, respectively and will be far more detailed then i originally planed as brought to my attention from another poster who longs to read my long rants, i a gentleman will oblige.
i will go through this entire article now line line stopping as needed .so that i'm not accused of being an underachiever, or omitting anything. each line or paragraph i adress will be numbered for easy reference for those who expect from me nothing less....'-)
..thus the following critique is firmly within the realms of classical criticism, i will begin with a jibe to a virgilian twilight, , philosophical criticism, for the post modernist here you will notice a heavy emphasis on foucault and his ideas of technologies of normalization, with some nods to the panopticon and dubards society of the spectacle as it relates to Deaf resistance to the combined system of CI and related entities.
ill take my time, wont hurry up and enjoy every single word i type of it...and post it in controlled drips...
again all apologies for the delay..get a coffee,,get another, and when your at it, get one more..,,,, this will be a long one.
the article being discussed is an opinion piece published in time weekend, but due to the outrage of the brevity of my post yesterday, im going to approach this article not only as a mere opinion piece from a mother hard luck struck with a deaf kid needing to get fixed, but also as statement of an ideological construct for a given purpose and goal in furthering that ideological construct, that construct is phonocentric colonialism, the goal in this article is to further the policies and narratives of CI and its related entities, as we will see, the author even uses words of a military nature in her statements as such. that goal is assimilation, to be waged on a front.
title of piece is
creep mother said:
"Cochlear implants have been controversial in Deaf culture — how would one change my son"
title begins with a rather large understatement, they have been far far more then controversial.
creep mother said:
(1) "On a cold January night, I was making dinner while my three boys played in and around the kitchen.
one may be forgiven in believing you just wandered into a chump change creative writing class, given, its january and cold and it's night, a mother is cooking in the kitchen, three boys are playing. it brings to mind "it was a dark and stormy night"..perhaps "it was the worst of times it was the best times...."given the nature of the piece though perhaps a better opening would be arma virumque cano, but instead i jest, michina virumque cano it more fitting, and this article offers all kinds of useful tricks as ill go into better detail in my analysis
creep mother said:
(2)"I heard my husband Mark’s key in the lock. Jake and Matthew, my two older sons, tore down the long, narrow hall toward the door. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” they cried and flung themselves at Mark before he was all the way inside.
touching...(i reach for tissue)
creep mother said:
(2)He was nearly two and he could say only ‘Mama,’ ‘Dada,’ ‘hello,’ and ‘up.’I turned and looked at Alex, my baby, who was 20 months old. He was still sitting on the kitchen floor, his back to the door, fully engaged in rolling a toy truck into a tower of blocks. A raw, sharp ache hit my gut. Taking a deep breath, I bent down, tapped Alex on the shoulder and, when he looked up, pointed at the pandemonium down the hall. His gaze followed my finger. When he spotted Mark, he leapt up and raced into his arms.
this could've been better constructed, and edited, it sets the scene of course of alexs being deaf and the discovery of it..
creep mother said:
(3)We had been worried about Alex for months. The day after he was born, four weeks early, in April 2003, a nurse appeared at my hospital bedside. I remember her blue scrubs and her bun and that, when she came in, I was watching the news reports from Baghdad, where Iraqis were throwing shoes at a statue of Saddam Hussein and people thought we had already won the war. The nurse told me Alex had failed a routine hearing test
well interesting juxtaposition, the iraq war, saddam hussein's statue, people throwing shoes,,,,,,alex failed a routine tests..
this is one of the mainstays of propaganda tools...here she set the emotional narrative int he reader,,,invasion, war, tyrants, masses of people throwing shoes, her son failed tests...which si the audist initiation ritual as described in valente..
creep mother said:
(4)His ears are full of mucus because he was early,” the nurse explained, “that’s probably all it is.” A few weeks later, when I took Alex back to the audiologist as instructed, he passed a test designed to uncover anything worse than mild hearing loss. Relieved, I put hearing out of my mind.
ah the relief...
creep mother said:
(5)It wasn’t until that January night in the kitchen that Alex was totally and obviously unresponsive to sound. Within weeks, tests revealed a moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss in both of Alex’s ears. That meant that the intricate and finely tuned cochleas in Alex’s ears weren’t conveying sound the way they should.
so now come to the ideological framework and initiation rituals as tagged and measured as shoulds and shouldn'ts...normal and abnormal,
creep mother said:
(6)Nonetheless, he still had usable hearing. With hearing aids, there was every reason to think Alex could learn to speak and listen. We decided to make that our goal. He had a lot of catching up to do. He was nearly two and he could say only “Mama,” “Dada,” “hello,” and “up.”
in this paragraph we are introduced to audist language that will recur speak and listen seem harmless enough, indeed, bu tit not those single words that's my point here, its how and who uses those words in their ideological frameworks that concern me here. and that agbell with its rebranded lsl,
coffee break
