Diffractions

Editorial: DEAF CULTURE

2024-01-22T18:45:15+00:00

Os Institutos de Surdos dos séculos XVIII e XIX: Centros de Língua Gestual e Cultura Surda

2023-12-03T18:42:24+00:00

A educação pública de surdos a nível mundial surgiu e estruturou-se nos Institutos de surdos dos séculos XVIII e XIX, hoje na sua maioria encerrados. Na atualidade, estes institutos são vistos como anacrónicos e segregadores à luz das teorias da educação inclusiva. Paradoxalmente, quando analisamos a História da Educação de Surdos muitos autores apontam a educação de surdos no referido período como a “Idade de Ouro” deste ramo da educação (Lane 1992; Cantin 2018; Delaporte 2002; Carvalho 2007). O presente artigo tem como objetivo olhar para estes antigos institutos como centros vivos e dinâmicos de desenvolvimento das línguas gestuais que eram transmitidas de geração em geração entre alunos, professores e funcionários Surdos. Por não ser separável língua de cultura, demonstraremos como estes institutos eram também centros de génese, estruturação e divulgação da Cultura Surda. A nossa análise será focada em três Institutos dos séculos XVIII e XIX, o Instituto Nacional de Surdos-Mudos de Paris, o Instituto Público de Surdos-Mudos e Cegos de Manilla em Estocolmo e o Real Instituto de Surdos-Mudos e Cegos de Lisboa, abrangendo um recorte temporal entre 1760 e 1834 e baseada em fontes primárias cotejadas nas bibliotecas e arquivos nacionais dos três países.

A decisive role for deaf epistemologies: analyzing power/knowledge in critical deaf pedagogy

2023-12-03T18:42:22+00:00

In American Sign Language (ASL), Transgressing the Object IV (2012): Critical Pedagogy depicts deaf women engaging in cinematic critical theory. According to the video-text, transgressing conceptualizes inequities of power and knowledge in deaf education and documents educational interactions about audism (antideaf oppression), sexism, and intersectionality. The women construct individual and collectivist deaf epistemologies that comprise an egalitarian counternarrative depicting critical deaf pedagogy. To interpret these pluralist discourses, I explore a theoretical framework about Deaf Culture in teaching and deaf aesthetics in learning. By doing so, I generate three analytic findings: 1) how culturally-revitalizing deaf pedagogies are established, 2) how power/knowledge is shared in equitable heterarchies, and 3) the benefits of educational interactions with deaf aesthetics, classroom architecture, sign language metaphors, and embodied multimodality. Finally, I describe the decisive role of deaf epistemologies in critical deaf pedagogy and juxtapose my findings against a conceptual framework about deaf peoples self-determination and struggles for legitimation.

The importance of teaching Deaf Community Cultural Wealth in family-centered sign language curricula

2023-12-03T18:42:29+00:00

Foreign language classes typically include cultural components, and signed languages are no exception. This paper describes a family-centered American Sign Language (ASL) curriculum designed specifically for hearing parents with young deaf children and its approach to teaching deaf culture. The authors suggest teaching Deaf Community Cultural Wealth (DCCW) from two perspectives. The first includes asking learners to reflect on their own personal experiences with cultural capital, then providing specific examples of resources for each type of capital from a deaf perspective. The second includes asking families to consider how they can apply each type of cultural capital to raising their deaf child. Families of deaf children are often criticized for their choices, but lessons on Deaf Community Cultural Wealth in family-centered signed language curricula provide the tools to resist this criticism.

Porquê o termo Língua Gestual Portuguesa?

2023-12-03T19:07:22+00:00

Língua Gestual Portuguesa é o termo utilizado pela Comunidade Surda para se referir à sua língua preferencial de comunicação (Amaral 1994). Este termo também tem sido utilizado por toda a comunidade académica e científica que investiga esta língua desde o final da década de 70 do século XX (Prata 1980). Recentemente, o uso deste termo foi colocado em questão num artigo de Correia (2020), em que a autora defende que este não será o termo adequado para nomear a língua em questão, propondo “Língua de Sinais Portuguesa” como o termo correto, evocando para o efeito razões históricas e linguísticas. Consideramos, ao contrário da autora supracitada, que o termo adequado para denominar a língua utilizada pela Comunidade Surda[1] Portuguesa é efetivamente “Língua Gestual Portuguesa”. Desta forma, o presente artigo tem como objetivo justificar a correção do uso do termo “Língua Gestual Portuguesa” tendo por base as perspetivas histórica, linguística, sociocultural e legislativa, esperando assim contribuir para uma discussão científica, alicerçada em bases sustentadas, através da crítica hermenêutica de fontes primárias, mas também tendo em conta o sentimento que o termo encerra para a comunidade que a usa, nos seus níveis cultural, linguístico, identitário e legal.

International Visual Theatre (IVT): amongst Deaf identity repair processes and emancipatory impulse.

2023-12-03T18:42:26+00:00

The IVT was created in Paris in 1977 by a North American Deaf actor, Alfredo Corrado, and Jean Grémion, a French theater director. The then hegemonic biomedical paradigm of deafness presented it as a malfunction and deaf people as subjects to be repaired. The idea that sign language could be a medium of artistic creation was unthinkable, including for Deaf people. We will start with analyzing the first two creations of the IVT: [ ] (1978) and ][ (1979). These enigmatic titles delimit a territory where the community could express, in the case of the first creation, and an external openness, in the case of the creation. Revealing how self-repair and the relation to others are put at work, these titles invite us to discover what emptiness causes in terms of aesthetic and political challenges. The project of the IVT resulted as an outlet from "hurt identities" (Pollak 1984), a place where one could heal not from a malfunction, but from the damages caused amongst the Deaf by the impulse to repair them. Finally, we will show the leading role of IVT in the emancipatory impetus that will drive the French Deaf political combats in the following decades.

Deaf immigrants in the northeast United States: intelligibility & the interpersonal

2023-12-03T18:42:31+00:00

How does being an immigrant shape the experience of being deaf in the United States and vice versa?Drawing from approximately 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the northeast United States, this research examines the lived experiences of deaf immigrants with a particular attention to their communicative encounters and languaging practices. This article focuses on the collaborative nature of deaf immigrants’ languaging to argue that understanding in communicative encounters is co-produced and that intelligibility is achieved relationally. Through ethnographic examples, I emphasize the importance of interpersonal relationships to establishing understanding in deaf immigrant communicative interactions and argue that, in encounters with the United States immigration regime, the social and interpersonal dimensions of communication are at least as significant (if not more so) than the linguistic dimensions to achieving such understanding.

Exploring Deaf Culture in Legal Texts: A Journey from Deafology to Cultural Rights

2023-12-04T08:19:29+00:00

This study aims to investigate whether the meaning and scope of Deaf Culture is integrated into legal texts. This study sought to demonstrate the legal panorama of Deaf Culture in light of the different approaches of the respective countries, explaining the emergence and evolution of Deaf Culture in sociopolitical and sociolegal literature. The research brought the common assumptions for the configuration of the Deaf Culture which was compared with the doctrines of the respective countries. The methodology used was doctrinal and jurisprudential research to assess the doctrinal position on the subject, as well as the deafological contributions, by and for deaf people, as a way of exposing the treatment given to the demands that involve the protection and promotion of Deaf Culture. The relevance of the research is based on the necessary - and scarce - contributions of Cultural Rights to understanding the legal status of Deaf Culture.

The power of signed song

2023-12-03T18:42:18+00:00

António Cabral was born profoundly deaf and had never thought of getting involved in music. While growing up, he had an interest in theatre and painting, and went on to paint professionally. Mãos que Cantam (Singing Hands) is the first professional, Deaf-led signed song group in Portugal. Created in 2010, the group is composed by five Deaf artists (António Cabral, Cláudia Dias, Carlos Gonçalves, Débora Carmo and Patrícia Carmo), one hearing conductor (Sérgio Peixoto) and the group’s designated Portuguese Sign Language interpreter (Sofia Figueiredo). The Deaf artists work as a team, translating lyrics into an aesthetic form of Portuguese Sign Language (Língua Gestual Portuguesa, LGP). Expressing musical elements visually, using different signing voices, developing synchronism to the original song, and rehearsing beginnings and endings of signed verses are all results of a group effort, in a fruitful Deaf-hearing collaboration, based on a profound respect for the language and culture of the Portuguese Deaf community.

Colin Thomson is one of the first Deaf sign-singers in the UK. He had a Deaf father, and has a profoundly deaf brother. He was born deaf and had some hearing growing up, until he became profoundly deaf at age 13. He started performing at 16 at a Deaf club and has now been performing for over 40 years. His method for creating translated signed songs is very specific. He uses elements from British Sign Language (BSL) poetry, such as producing signs with the same handshape during a whole verse, and making use of particular rhythmic techniques. Furthermore, he changes the original lyrics of mainstream songs in order to tell stories about the experiences of Deaf people, which pleases Deaf audiences and informs hearing spectators on Deaf culture.

Acknowledgements

2023-12-03T18:32:57+00:00