Fear of a Deaf Planet: Or Why I Don't Like Alexander Graham Bell

David Call: George and the Dragon

University of Oregon Libraries

 

"As long as we have deaf people on earth, we will have signs."

 

 

I. 

 

Putting aside the fact that I have a strong aversion to making or receiving telephone calls - due more to philosophical reasons tied to the question concerning technology, rather than to social anxiety - I still have good reason to despise the man credited with patenting the first such device in 1876; namely, Alexander Graham Bell.

 

For whilst this Scottish-born inventor was undoubtedly a man of considerable talent - responsible for groundbreaking work in many fields - he was also a fanatic advocate of oralism; i.e., the phonocentric insistence that deaf people abandon the use of sign language (or manualism as it was known amongst reformers in the 19th-century) and communicate primarily (if not exclusively) by mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech and learning to lipread.    

 

Advocates of oralism, such as Bell, whose mother and wife were both deaf - and whose father, grandfather, and brother were all associated with work on speech and elocution - believed that even those who were born without the ability to hear could - and should - learn to speak; that it was just a question of training (in much the same way as he had once trained the family dog to say How are you, grandmama?) [1].   

 

II. 

 

Now, as someone who has previously attempted to see the world through deaf eyes and opposed audism on several occasions - click here, for example - I obviously find Bell's work as a self-professed teacher of the deaf problematic. 

 

Particularly as he was closely associated with the eugenics movement, which feared the development of a deaf race which, it was believed, threatened the phonocentric basis of society with their sinister use of sign language. In order to prevent this, it was necessary to reduce the deaf race by preventing them from marrying and having children. 

 

To be fair, Bell didn't support the more extreme measures advocated by some. But, in lengthy essays such as Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race (1884) [2], he did openly advocate for oralism and the banning of sign language within schools and wider society. He also wrote lines such as this: 

 

"Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriage of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy." [3]

 

Utimately, Bell wanted the integration not the elimination of deaf people. Nevertheless, the image of an insular, inbred, and proliferating deaf race was a pernicious fantasy that was repeated for many years and such surdophobia [4] was carefully exploited by those promoting the ideology of oralism. 

 

Thus, Bell is not regarded positively by those within the deaf community today and I understand why deaf artists and activists, such as David Call, have depicted him in a less than flattering light, as the image above illustrates [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Actually, it was a trick: having taught the poor dog to growl continuously, Bell would reach into its mouth and manipulate the animal's lips and vocal cords to produce a crude series of sounds. Listeners were then persuaded to believe that the dog was talking. 

 

[2] In this work, Bell issued a warning that deaf people were effectively forming an alternative society, by intermarrying and socialising with one another. Like others, he was even led to the conclusion that a deaf race was in the process of evolving - despite evidence to the contrary put forward by those who, for example, pointed out that although deafness can be an inherited condition, only a small percentage of deaf couples have deaf children.  

[3] The irony was that Bell was himself able to use sign language; even though, he strongly opposed it. In fact, his last word was signed to his deaf wife Mabel on his deathbed.

 

[4] Surdophobia is a term recently coined by Gardy van Gils, a deaf researcher at Utrecht University. She defines it as a form of hostile intolerance for deaf individuals, or an irrational fear of the deaf community resulting in opposition to the use of sign language. 

 

[5] This image by David Call - linocut on paper - was purchased by the University of Oregon in 2019 from the Eye Hand Studio. It shows the American educator, filmmaker, and activist George Veditz slaying A. G. Bell depicted as a dragon. 

      Veditz, the son of German immigrants, lost his hearing aged eight due to scarlet fever. He served as the seventh President of the National Association of the Deaf from 1904 to 1910 and is celebrated within the deaf community today as one of the most passionate and visible advocates of American Sign Language. His film "Preservation of the Sign Language" (1913) was added to the US National Film Registry in 2010. In it, Veditz not only makes a strong defense of the right of the deaf people to use sign language, but also talks of its beauty and complexity as a valid form of human communication. 

 

 

On the Art of Speaking Without Speaking

A speaker presenting work in an approved manner; i.e., staying resolutely 
with the script and making no attempt to engage or interact with the audience

Although I frequently present work in public, as a rule I never speak without notes and prefer where possible to read without deviation or interruption from a carefully prepared text - much to the annoyance of members of the audience who subscribe to the metaphysics of presence and feel they are entitled to my fully being there in the capacity of speaker. 

I do this for a philosophical reason; namely, to counter the Socratic prejudice that speech is superior to writing and that thinkers should pride ourselves on their ability to memorize information and chat freely in an impromptu manner, thereby demonstrating a lively intelligence and an essential depth of true knowledge or wisdom. 

Put simply, I don't want to speak from the heart, or reveal the secrets of my soul. Like Derrida, I think it's perfectly legitimate - and important - to challenge the privileging of speech over writing (something that remains crucial to the structural presuppositions of philosophy). Indeed, if I had my way I'd use one of those voice synthesizers made famous by Stephen Hawking to depersonalize the whole performance still further and counter the pernicious stupidity of phonocentrism in this manner.

Thus, for me, writing is never a mere supplement to speech and the spoken word is not sovereign, or in a superior (because in a more direct and immediate) relationship to thought itself. And, although I'm quite happy to read a script in public, if invited to do so, I insist on my right to somehow absence myself from the whole event (cloaked, as it were, in anonymity, ambiguity, and invisibility) and to speak in a voice that is not necessarily my own.

I'm not then what might be thought of as a parrhesiast - a free-speaker of the truth without concealment. Nor am I one who says what he means and means what he says. Rather, I offer perspectives, not personal opinions or beliefs, and I attempt to move about in a transpositional manner without attaching myself anywhere.

That said, I would like to think that, as a philosophical provocateur, I share something with the parrhesiast and that is the courage to risk offending my listeners; of irritating them, of making them angry and provoking them to conduct which may be abusive (You're worse than Hitler) or even violent.

In sum: there's no fundamental bond between what I say and what I may (or may not) think, but I am prepared to piss people off. Mine is a modality not of truth-telling per se, but of enigmatic provocation. Or perhaps - as one woman said following a presentation at The Hospital Club - a form of mental illness ...        

         

Return to Plato's Pharmacy

Say what you like about Socrates, but at least he didn't take any shit from poets.

This - of all things - was recently said to me - of all people (and in all seriousness) - by someone who really should have known better before offering not only a highly dubious defense of the spoken word, but what has become after Derrida a philosophically untenable privileging of the latter over the written text.

Who would have imagined that phonocentrism would still be making its voice heard in the digital age?

But, unfortunately, it is. And so we must return to ancient Greece once more and re-examine the Socratic prejudice against writing, which is conceived as a pharmakon - i.e., as a type of drug that has both beneficial and potentially lethal aspects.

According to Socrates, the gift of writing was one of many given by the Egyptian inventor-deity Theuth to the god-king Thamus. Theuth informs the latter that writing is useful as a powerful aide-memoire, but Thamus protests that its effect is likely to be quite the opposite; that whilst it might superficially remind people of the truth, it will not help them to genuinely remember and to know the truth as it essentially resides within the soul. In other words, writing creates the appearance or illusion of wisdom, but not the reality. The gift is thus returned and determined to be a grave danger rather than a great blessing (a poison, rather than a pleasure).

Developing this theme, Socrates tells his young companion, Phaedrus, that a written text is not to be trusted because, unlike an actual speaker, it lacks living, breathing presence and cannot answer questions or defend itself. A true lover of wisdom will always wish to address an audience in person and have his words heard directly by the ears of his listeners, rather than make use of the external marks of writing to be seen by the eyes of unknown (and perhaps unworthy) readers in private. Or, if a philosopher does succumb to the temptation to inscribe his thoughts, he will nevertheless be ready and willing to defend them in discussion with others; affirming his paternity or authorship of the text whilst at the same time having the decency to concede that his writings are derivative and of little value in comparison to his spoken words.

Derrida would have none of this Ideal nonsense and he rejects the myth of presence and the privileging of the voice and ear over the hand and eye. His reading of the Phaedrus is exemplary I think - despite predictable objections coming from some quarters. Without either agreeing or disagreeing with the arguments put forward by Socrates, Derrida exposes their gaps and instabilities, deconstructing the very logic upon which the Socratic method is founded. In other words, Derrida shows how Plato's attempt to casually insert writing into a system of metaphysical dualism fails because writing's status as a pharmakon means it cannot be fixed or stabilized; rather, it remains a play of possibilities that moves in, out, and across all oppositions slowly but surely infecting or polluting the entire system.

In the end, suggests Derrida, if you wish to understand language, then you need to acknowledge that it rests upon a model of arche-writing - and not the spoken word. This is not to advance an empirical assertion to the effect that writing emerged chronologically earlier than speech. That would be silly and factually incorrect. But writing is not secondary nor some kind of parasitic supplement to speech.

And the poet is not simply a poor relation to the philosopher ... 

Dare to See the World Through Deaf Eyes

Sometimes, I like to pretend that I'm deaf and I try to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear ... 
It's not so bad.

Perhaps we should all try like Larry to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear and dare to see the world through deaf eyes. Perhaps we'd find the silence beautiful. And liberating as well as instructive.

For to live in a soundless, speechless world without birdsong or the insistence of the human voice, is not to live without contact or to be loveless: we do not become fish simply because we surrender our ears and enter a mute but amazingly dexterous world of sign and physical gesture.

But, of course, most people will never concede the point that the profoundly deaf are neither disabled nor stupid. For audism is deeply-rooted within our culture and draws philosophical support from what Derrida has identified as phonocentrism: i.e. the belief that the voice is the privileged medium of truth and meaning and that hearing is the deepest of all the senses, sound acting directly upon the great affective centres of being.

Until we deconstruct, or, if you prefer, curb our enthusiasm for this metaphysical prejudice, then we will continue to remain enthralled by orality and continue to discriminate against those who cannot hear and find the idea of reading lips offensive and humiliating.