Deaf Geographies: spaces of Ownership and other real and imaginary places
Temas
Detalles
As people never tire of telling me, Geography and Deaf Studies do not, at first, appear to be particularly natural bed fellows. Indeed, I would never have associated them myself if it had not been for the ESRC’s funding programme which required me to go through a second masters degree and the vagaries of departmental loyalties that eventually pushed me towards the geographical sciences. One of the reasons for this apparent failure to meet is the approach that each has, so far, taken to the other. Geographers have, ignored what Deaf culture has to offer and targeted deaf people as a source for evidence within a wider category of “disability geographies”. The issues that have interested them are: Deaf access to environments, marginalisation of young Deaf people and the performance of Deaf identities. However, for all its post-colonial reflexivity, geography as a discipline has never recognised Deaf people’s potential contribution to Geography, or allowed for Deaf discourses to affect geography itself. Similarly, Deaf studies has paid lip service to ‘geography’ by noting the regional, national and global distributions of Deaf culture and the roles of each in the global Deaf community. However, despite the rise in Deaf-centred evocations of concepts such as: colonialism, nationhood, space and territory and performed identities, all debates that would otherwise flatter a mainstream human geography department, Deaf studies has not yet engaged seriously with Geographical thinking.