Discerning personhood through <i>lena-dena</i>: Disability professionals, ethics, and communication

This article looks at practices of discernment in disability spaces in India by analyzing (hierarchical) relational contexts in which disability professionals and disabled people in India interact. We argue that discernment, which we explore through lena-dena (giving and taking), allows us to analyze the ethical stakes of processes of communication, interpreting, and facilitation. Vaidya analyzes how special educators make broad discernments about intellectually disabled people by interpreting their unconventional and nonlinguistic communicative cues. In contrast, Friedner examines how speech and language therapists that work with deaf children make narrow discernments regarding what counts as language and perform the labor of training deaf children to communicate in the normatively correct way—that is, using speech. While disability professionals produce specific kinds of personhood for disabled people through their practices of discernment, they also end up discerning themselves in the process as professionals with difficult yet rewarding jobs. We conclude by discussing a program for individuals with intellectual disabilities where both authors conducted ethnographic research wherein disability professionals discerned disabled people as having social needs and desires on par with nondisabled people and created enabling environments, scaffolded activities, and facilitated conversations to produce and enable complex personhood for them. Este artículo analiza las prácticas de discernimiento en espacios de discapacidad en India para analizar los contextos relacionales (jerárquicos) en los cuales profesionales de la discapacidad y personas discapacitadas en India interactúan. Argumentamos que discernimiento, el cual exploramos a través de lena-dena (dar y recibir), nos permite analizar los riesgos de los procesos de comunicación, interpretación y facilitación. Vaidya analiza cómo los educadores especiales hacen discernimientos amplios acerca de las personas discapacitadas intelectualmente al interpretar sus señales comunicativas no convencionales y no lingüísticas. En contraste, Friedner examina cómo los terapistas de la expresión y el lenguaje que trabajan con niños sordos hacen discernimientos limitados con relación a lo que cuenta como lenguaje y realizan la labor de entrenar niños sordos para comunicarse en la forma normativamente correcta –es decir, usando el habla–. Mientras los profesionales de la discapacidad producen tipos específicos sobre la condición de persona para personas discapacitadas a través de sus prácticas de discernimiento, también terminan discerniendo ellos mismos en el proceso como profesionales con trabajos difíciles pero gratificantes. Concluimos discutiendo un programa para individuos con discapacidades intelectuales donde los dos autores llevaron a cabo una investigación etnográfica en la que profesionales de la discapacidad discernieron la persona con discapacidad como teniendo necesidades sociales y deseos al mismo nivel de personas sin discapacidad y crearon ambientes propicios, actividades de andamiaje educativo, y facilitaron conversaciones para mostrarles y facilitarles una condición de persona compleja. [discapacidad, comunicación, condición de persona, discernimiento, India] यह निबंध भारत मे विकलांग लोगों की विविध जगहों मे काम करनेवाले व्यावसायिक और विकलांग व्यक्ति इनके बीच की “परस्पर पहचान (आकलन) प्रक्रिया”ओं की विविध रीतीयोंकी खोज लेता है. यह रीतीया सापेक्ष, श्रेणीबद्ध, संबद्ध परक होती है. इन “परस्पर पहचान (आकलन) प्रक्रिया”ओं की खोजमे “लेना-देना” (लेन-देन, giving & taking) इस संकल्पना का प्रयोग करनेके कारण हम “ संचार प्रक्रिया, अर्थ की खोज करना, एवं सुविधा प्रदान करना” इन गतिविधियों की नैतिक-जिम्मेदारी का विश्लेषण कर सकते है. बौद्धिक-विकलांगों के अपारंपरिक और अशाब्दिक संचारी-संकेतों को विशेष शिक्षक किस प्रकार समझते है इसका विश्लेषण वैद्य करती है. इसके विपरीत, कर्ण बधिर बच्चों के साथ काम करनेवाले वाक-चिकित्सक, अपनी भाषा विषयक मर्यादित पहचान प्रक्रियाओं के अनुसार उन्हे कष्टपूर्वक “मानक रूपसे सही” भाषा सिखाते है- बोलना सिखाते है- इसका विवेचन फ्रीडनर करती है. विकलांगों के लिए काम करनेवाले व्यावसायिक अपनी पहचान प्रक्रियाओं के द्वारा विकलांगो के लिए ‘‘विशिष्ट व्यक्ति विशेष (या पहचान) को रूप देते समय उनके साथ खुदका आकलन “कठिन मगर सुकून देनेवाला काम करनेवाले व्यावसायिक” इस प्रकार करते है. इस लेखका समापन करते हुए बौद्धिक-विकलांगों के एक प्रकल्प मे दोनो लेखिकाओने किए हुए मानव वंश शास्त्रीय (एन्थ्रपोलोजी) संशोधन का विवेचन किया है. इस प्रकल्पमें काम करनेवाले व्यावसायिक विकलांग व्यक्ति का आकलन -सामान्य व्यक्ति जैसी सामाजिक आवश्यकता, आकांक्षा रखानेवले व्यक्ति- इस प्रकार करते है. विकलांग व्यक्ति के व्यामिश्र व्यक्ति विशेष या पहचान को रूप देने लायक सक्षम परिवेश, उसे बढावा देनेवले मंच और बातचीत आसन बनानेवाला माहोल बनाते है. [विकलांगता, संचार प्रक्रिया, परस्पर पहचान (आकलन) प्रक्रिया, भारत]</p

On "diversity" and "inclusion":Exploring paradigms for achieving Sign Language Peoples' rights

The use of the concepts “diversity” and “inclusion” are analyzed with regard to deaf people, whom we call Sign Language Peoples (SLPs), specifically in policy discourses (as used by the World Federation of the Deaf and in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and academic discourses (particularly the concept of Deaf Gain). Discussing such discourses, we evaluate the promises and perils of “diversity” and “inclusion” in policy positions and scholarly analysis. We argue that in order for these concepts to be useful for SLPs in the achievement of rights, we need to foreground a specific understanding of inclusion as societal inclusion, and diversity as needing a group rights-based foundation. As such, we explore different paradigms for understanding how SLPs are part of diversity and how they can be included. As such, we contribute to scholarship and debate on inclusion and diversity beyond the particular case of SLPs

Sound Studies Meets Deaf Studies

Sound studies and Deaf studies may seem at first impression to operate in worlds apart. We argue in this article, however, that similar renderings of hearing, deafness, and seeing as ideal types - and as often essentialized sensory modes - make it possible to read differences between Sound studies and Deaf studies as sites of possible articulation. We direct attention to four zones of productive overlap, attending to how sound is inferred in deaf and Deaf practice, how reimagining sound in the register of low-frequency vibration can upend deafhearing dichotomies, how “deaf futurists“ champion cyborg sound, and how signing and other non-spoken communicative practices might undo phonocentric models of speech. Sound studies and Deaf studies emerge as fields with much to offer one another epistemologically, theoretically, and practically

Negotiating legitimacy in American Sign Language interpreting education: Uneasy belonging in a community of practice

This article ethnographically explores how American Sign Language-English interpreting students negotiate and foreground different kinds of relationships to claim legitimacy in relation to deaf people and the deaf community. As the field of interpreting is undergoing shifts from community interpreting to professionalization, interpreting students endeavor to legitimize their involvement in the field. Students create distinction between themselves and other students through relational work that involves positive and negative interpretation of kinship terms. In analyzing interpreting students' gate-keeping practices, this article explores the categories and definitions used by interpreting students and argues that there is category trouble that occurs. Identity and kinship categories are not nuanced or critically interrogated, resulting in deaf people and interpreters being represented in static ways

Disability Justice as Part of Structural Competency: Infra/structures of Deafness, Cochlear Implantation, and Re/habilitation in India

In 2014, the Indian state revised a key program providing aids and appliances to disabled people to also include cochlear implants for children living below the poverty line. The program is remarkable in its targeting of the poorest of the poor to provide them with expensive technology made by multinational corporations and its development of new surgery and rehabilitation infrastructures throughout India. Based on interviews and participant observation with key stakeholders, this paper argues that in focusing only on “a right to hearing” and on cochlear implants as a solution for deafness, health care practitioners ignore the complex work required to maintain cochlear implant infrastructures, as well as the advocacy work done by disability activists in India and internationally to transform existing political, economic, educational, and social structures. Since cochlear implants are the “gold standard” in intervening on hearing loss and increasing numbers of countries in the Global South have started state-funded cochlear implant programs, an exploration of India’s program provides an opportunity to analyze both the importance of infrastructure and the need to combat ableism within structural competency frameworks. Disability justice is part of structural competency. Ultimately what is at stake is expanding health practitioners’ ideas of what it means to maximize potential, particularly in the face of new technological interventions around disability