Paths of Deafhood

As a hearing person, when I began studying LSQ, Quebec's sign language, I quickly realized that I knew very little about Deaf culture and that very rarely had I been exposed to it. On the occasion of International Sign Language Day, marked on September 23rd of every year since 2018, I reflected on this stopover with the intention of giving more visibility to Deaf communities, still kept in the shadows by the mass media - and cinema is no exception. The year 2022 started off with a fresh breeze, thanks to the Oscar for Best Picture awarded to a feature film starring Deaf actors (*CODA&). However, the celebrations surrounding this cinematic event lead me to question myself. What representations of Deaf communities are being made in mainstream culture? Can I name other titles that feature Deaf people? Will such success allow Deaf artists to find a place on the screen?

Thanks to this documentary stopover, I have the desire to put forward the plurality of Deaf experiences and to give a platform to the Deaf culture which is still too often reduced to silence, but which nevertheless has so many things to reveal and to claim. Far from any form of miserabilism, this program wishes to celebrate the richness, diversity and struggles that characterize this unique culture.

In the course of my research, I have come across the writings of Deaf authors, thus discovering a host of notions and nuances specific to their community. Deafness, a term derived from and rooted in the medical field, confines our vision of deaf and hard of hearing people as defective beings, with a handicap to be corrected. In reaction to this definition, deaf researcher Paddy Ladd coined the neologism deafhood in 2003. This concept aims to put aside a pathological approach in order to prioritize a process of personal growth for each individual, inviting him or her to accept and affirm the positive aspects that result from their condition. As Véro Leduc, the first deaf person to hold a professorship in a Quebec university, explains: "the concept of deafness can nevertheless be used as an umbrella to reflect on what it means to live as a deaf person, on becoming deaf (an experience that is transformed over time) as well as on the power relationships marked by audism - a normative system that values hearing people and their ways of living (e.g., hearing, speaking) and places people who are not deaf in a position of power: hearing, speaking) and places deaf people in a situation of subordination or discrimination, and this, through a set of practices, actions, beliefs and attitudes."

True vector of emancipation, deafness reiterates the importance of sign languages beyond communicational tools: the mastery of a signed language allows the expression of a Deaf identity and the group cohesion of a cultural minority. Recognized as languages in their own right since the 1960s, the United Nations now counts approximately 300 distinct signed languages. 

Through this program, I present five sign languages: LSF (I'll Come To You With Deaf Eyes), DGS (Louisa), ÖGS (Seeing Voices), ISN (A Life Without Words) and ISL (Signing). This last title, directed by documentary filmmaker Nurith Aviv, shows us that just like spoken languages, each sign language has subtleties of accents and dialects, in addition to being subject to the influences of other languages and linguistic borrowings. Each of them has its own history and its own particularities of vocabulary, grammar, syntax, semantics and even slang! Defined as visuo-gestural languages, signed languages are not limited to the movement of the hands, they make use of the body as a whole.

As witnessed in the films, deafness has no borders, it extends over a wide spectrum: here, all the filmed protagonists have singular paths. Some, for lack of resources, have never learned to communicate and are introduced to a signed language (A Life Without Words) while another was raised orally and refuses the cochlear implant (Louisa). Some of them are hearing children of deaf parents (Signing), some have the chance to learn their mother tongue in a safe environment (Seeing Voices).

Throughout the works, the question of identity often comes up. Each individual navigates his or her deafness differently, depending on his or her condition: deaf from birth, hard of hearing, implanted or deafened. The vision of deafness also differs within the community: some consider their condition as a handicap, others as a characteristic of their identity. All of these realities are different, yet everyone faces the same stigma and oppression (I'll Come To You With Deaf Eyes).

To be an ally is to be informed, to reflect on our privileges as hearing people and to implement concrete means for a better social inclusion of deaf and hard of hearing people. It also means recognizing that discrimination persists and that audism is often expressed in an unconscious way - hence the importance of deconstructing it.

Anouk Vallières
Guest programmer, picky cinephile & urban gleaner

 

REFERENCES (IN FRENCH)

Leduc, V. (2018). La trajectoire historique de la sourditude. Relations, (797), 19–20.

www.un.org/fr/observances/sign-languages-day

histoireengagee.ca/la-langue-des-signes-quebecoise-langue-populaire-et-enjeux-ordinaires