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.