I argue that oppression is much more than “linguistic oppression” which cultural advocates proposes, it is real societal marginalization, so hence it requires a re-think. Below are various snippets of my earlier works, pasted together and I have tried to keep this short as possible. This is just to provide a glance at distinction between cultural model and social model and how it may interact to take the d/Deaf people’s political interest in affirming the needs of Deaf Rights to the next level. This requires a reconsideration of Deaf people’s matters and thinking of how hearing people might listen to us. I held back a lot and I have my reasons, but I believe this post may shed some light. These below are various snippets from my earlier work.
For starters, the clash between deafness and disability has forced d/Deaf people who consider disability to be something we 'own' as a problem, which doesn’t belong to anyone else but ourselves. And similarly, hearing people thinks we ‘own’ deafness as a problem (be it disability ‘commonly mistaken as visually seen as a “wheelchair” problem’ notion or educationally stunted because of inability to hear/speak spoke languages), these shared common grounds, - ignorance.
This gives rise to hearing people to rationalise their unfamiliarity for what we want, instead they politely ascertain to help us on our 'needs'. That needs are usually fit nicely to how hearing people prefer what treatment we receive. No wonder we are still having problems because much of what happens to us continues to create and re-create the misery of our existence simply because we are not getting exactly what we require.
So, I look beyond the issue of access to education to an analysis of the group and power relations that exist between Deaf and hearing people in schools, universities, and the broader community. Deaf people have traditionally been positioned, labeled, and constructed as "disabled" by educational and other powerful societal institutions. The issues of power, control, and legitimacy are central to language practices in education. Deliberately or unwittingly, language practices are political acts that serve the interests of particular groups. In this way, English is legitimized and perpetuated in deaf education.
We already know that Deaf people are taught to consider deafness is not an impairment, but as a cultural difference for which follows the linguistic mindset , which is fine, but it has limits. Let’s go back to impairment, and see the distinction between impairment and disability.
Impairment: Lack or malfunction of sensory, cognitive or physiological structures of the body or mind. Disability: is the disadvantage caused by the social, economic, political and environmental factors which restrict and/or exclude impaired people from participating in their communities. (Adapted from UPIAS, 1976)
This means that Disability is NOT something people have (ie “People with Disabilities”), it IS something which happens to people. From this standpoint, it follows that disability is a political problem, it is created by society; so it is located in society and social organisations. Also, Disability exists as a problem generated by society that is structured & organised by & for nondisabled people and underpinned by nondisabled values. So this covers both the infrastructure and superstructure of society. Hence this means, disability is imposed on those living with impairment in a disabling and disableist society, and that disabled people experience disability as social oppression and powerlessness- hence ‘disabled’ really means “Not allowed to do” or discouraged to do because we are a less preferred people (society’s vogue view likes to use ‘individuals’ which ‘sounds’ nicer but really it serves to separate us from ‘our social problems’ into a box ‘which supposedly on belong to individuals AS individual own misguided “faults”, not Society’s faults.
Now, to fuse in deafness into disability reads like this; Put more radically, “it is not [d/Deaf] disabled people who need examining but able-bodied society; it is not a case of educating [deaf and hearing people] disabled and able-bodied people for integration, but of fighting institutional disablism; it is not disability relations which should be the field for study but disablism.” (Oliver, 1992, p. 112) (my italics). In plainer terms, society has not accepted that is society that has to change and accept people not the other way around. This is what Deaf politics forego. (Davis,2008).
We require social and structural change to society, its organisation and values. This means we need to be more critical, to establish a dialogue which seeks to accomplish a means to constitute the distinction between not understanding and being included in the hearing world, and indeed what is hearing culture. Equal attention to balance Deaf culture and hearing culture is needed. Any desire to establish any grounds to facilitate negotiation that could superlatively benefit both deaf and hearing culture.
This approach may push forward the Deaf political movement (not emphasising culture, but politics, although culture is important but for stake of this post, put it aside) but ownership of research interests, communication standards for hearing society to adopt, but let d/Deaf people regulate this. However, for proliferation, a difficulty in this premise remains since the lack of a working dialogue disallows negotiation for equity. This is certain to say d/Deaf people are not conscientised in political sense, thus lacking the ability to see the operation of power in people and society. Stark awakening of the underlying premise of the current mould of social policy is desired, cultural model gets swamped by linguists and petty council regulators, effectively leaving the current mode of deaf education intact.
Although, it should be acknowledged that the cultural model’s strength lies in the formality which provide a way to avoid thinking deafness as a confused perception as a language with speech and challenges the assumption that deafness is a barrier to learning. This view holds true only if we assume that communication, language, and normality can be achieved only through speech. And also the cultural model maintains that oppression also exist in the ab¬sence of overt discrimination, occurring in forms of exploitation (I think linguists does this too, for they fetishize sign languages as quint research topics -and nothing more (I believe Alex thinks so too)), marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism.
It was somewhat exchanged for support of "deaf culture” over “deaf individuals". Whist in reality the deaf individuals are subjected to uneven playing field in society which takes little or no consideration for inclusion which would have otherwise deem to counteract against marginalisation, alienation and disenfranchisement. The 'minority rights' agenda is contrasted with disabled people's struggles for the legitimating of 'new' disability discourses has backfired within a framework relative to issues of cultural incompatibility. More so, the problem posed above maintains that relying solely on the form of conduit in one of the primary channels through linguistic mobilisation to overcome one of cultural resistance against the norm, should be reinforced with political resistance.
I think I shall leave it at that.
Peace.
Grummer I think what you wrote was so important I'm gonna review it again but I'm glad you put it up here.