Wednesday 30 January 2008

V for Victimhood

Audism is “the hearing way of dominating, restructuring, and exercising authority over the deaf community” [1] and is “the most dramatic form of historical enactment of the enforcement of phonocentrism”. [2] At the appearance of yet another oppressed minority, one subject to the terrible and entrenched prejudices of phonocentrism and audism, it is only appropriate that we all make the effort to express ourselves in the little bit of sign-language that we all know.
.....
[1] Harlan Lane, The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992), p.43; quoted by H-Dirksen Bauman, “Listening to Phonocentrism with Deaf Eyes: Derrida’s Mute Philosophy of (Sign) Language”, Essays in Philosophy, Vol. 9:1, January 2008.
[2] H-Dirksen Bauman, op. cit.

7 comments:

The Pedant-General said...

I, myself, am entirely unable to understand art rendered in elephant dung.

I demand that my Proboscidiscatoligiphobia is pandered to.

Anonymous said...

"it is only appropriate that we all make the effort to express ourselves in the little bit of sign-language that we all know."

I did that once in my youth and was well and truly ticked off by a policeman!

Anonymous said...

Being lobbyists for deaf victimhood I don't suppose they consider it necessary to offer a pronunciation guide, but it would help.

Is it Audism as in Audie Murphy or WH Auden? I wouldn't want to get it wrong.

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear.

Malcolm Pollack said...

Well, I for one am certainly not going to turn a deaf ear to their plea for dignity.

But aren't we all ignoring the plight of the most "differently abled" and disenfranchised group of all, namely those we so callously refer to as the "dead"?

When it comes to equal-employment opportunites, housing rights, and public-sector accommodations of every sort, the previously living are discriminated against at every turn. When will they find their voice?

Deogolwulf said...

A fine chorus of sympathy there, chaps.

James Higham said...

On the edge, this one. Appropriate that Cleanthes is here.