Deaf geographies sandbox

Updates from June, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  Mike Gulliver 6:22 pm on June 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: AAG 2012 ( 4 ), Geographies, sponsorship   

  What kind of Geographies are Deaf Geographies anyway? 

  So, here’s the quandary – faced with proposing sessions for the AAG next year, the question currently going around those involved in 2011 is who to approach for sponsorship which, if you don’t know, means persuading the big powerful interest-groups of the AAG to recognise facets of Deaf Geographies as belonging to them, or identified with them in some way, and lend them some support

  The decision isn’t completely make or break. The two sessions this year were sponsored by Communication Geography and Qualitative Geography and still featured papers from other geographical sub-disciplines, but being sponsored gets you recognition and a central time and place for the sessions both during the conference, and in the conference documentation.

  Plus, it’s interesting to think about which of the big interest groups best provides a home for Deaf geographies.

  The list of those proposed is as follows:

  • Cultural geography
  • Qualitative geography
  • Political geography
  • Historical geography
  • Sexuality and space
  • Ethnic geography
  • Population
  • Urban geography
  • Communication geography

  I propose to start picking these apart and adding to them what areas of Deaf geographical research I can possibly think of. I’d invite anyone else to chip in… even if only to disagree or to suggest particular projects or challenges in that area.

  When we’re done, some kind of synthesis will be posted to the Deafgeographies.com site for reference for those less familiar with Deaf geographies and questions of Deaf/DEAF space.

   

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  Notify me of new comments via email.

  Notify me of new posts via email.

  Δ

• 

  Mike Gulliver 4:00 pm on June 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: architecture, DEAF space ( 11 ), deafhood ( 3 ), gallaudet ( 3 ), hansel bauman, social model of disability, thought experiment, utopics   

  DEAF space or the question of ‘what if’… 

  A problem is looming that is going to only get bigger… Having spent the last 6 or 7 years exploring the way that members of a self-recognising DEAF community produce spaces for being… and called it ‘DEAF space’, another ‘Deaf space’ is emerging which means something different.

  This puts me (or rather, my work) in rather an interesting position; I’m finding that my work is being redefined by a popular expression of something that’s not what I researched at all…

  I have no desire at all to fight over the name…

  Firstly… because I know where Deaf space has come from (the Gallaudet architecture project)… and I know the people involved (notably Hansel Bauman).  I like Hansel and his work… I even shared a platform with him at the recent AAG in Seattle. His work is firmly part of Deaf geographies and he’s a contributor on the DEAF space blogs.

  So… there’s no issue there of telling Hansel that his work is wrong… it’s not… it’s just different.

  Second… I don’t really even know whether ‘DEAF space’ is the best label for what I’ve been researching… see the previous post on boundaries of DEAF space for more on that… (mind you, I don’t know whether ‘Deaf space’ is any good for what Hansel’s been looking at, but it’s as good a name as any other).

  Finally… I’m not really sure that there should be a difference made… after all… all you have to do is look at DEAF space (as I’ve described it… as a space that allows DEAF people to ‘fully be’…) and extend the utopian side of my thinking to a point where DEAF people start to have control over their built environment… and you end up with a Deaf space.

  However, I guess it’s the need to see that linear path of argument, and then to follow it back and forth in a number of directions… and wonder what happens when space veers off it suddenly that makes me uncomfortable… that’s the kind of mental game that academics like to play… but how relevant is it really to the DEAF community?

  That’s where Paddy Ladd’s Deafhood is so good, for all its potential theoretical fragility… it is an easy to grasp concept that really carries weight and moves people to action (or internal evolution), even in a popular form…

  Deaf space as Hansel’s working on it, in a popular form, looks pretty much like what it is… environment designed around a different way of being human… it’s not ‘accommodation’ or ‘access’, it’s the social model of disability flipped around and given to the DEAF community…

  Whereas what I’ve been researching is actually a kind of DEAF utopics… and what I’m moving gradually towards is a utopic theory that not only encompasses DEAF space, but extends that to others who life their lives from within differently able physical bodies…ultimately problematising the ‘DEAF’ of ‘DEAF space’.

  Perhaps I can continue to use DEAF space… but actually start referring to it as only a part of what I research, which is more a kind of multiply sensed, human ‘what if’…

  What transformative power is there though, in something that is necessarily a thought experiment… ?