Tag: Deaf Artists
Rethinking ASL Justice & AGBell Colonialism
Without question, 2018 has been emotional, heart-breaking, heart-crunching, heart-wrenching, hurt, being lied to, being deceived, confused, showing the culture of bystander, denials, and lost souls for Deaf community. Where is justice for American Sign Language (ASL)?
LEAD-K. It was never about data. It was about Alexander Graham Bell. With our help, we need to stand up for justice and stop Alexander Graham Bell patronizing Deaf people down. In fact, the word of the year for 2018 by Merriam-Webster has chosen “justice”—how fitting it is.
In New York Times by Dan Levin, writes that:‘in choosing the noun, Merriam-Webster said that it was looked up on its website 74 percent more often than in 2017’
LEAD-K was never about justice. It was more like travesty. What is travesty? Representing in a false or distorted way and that is how Deaf community felt about being represented in a false picture that it is all right to team up with Alexander Graham Bell.
LEAD-K helped Alexander Graham Bell gain more prejudice against ASL in our Deaf community. They are allowing Alexander Graham Bell to gain access to hate and Surdophobia in Deaf schools and mainstreaming schools.
Two years after LEAD-K formed, there are two things are absolutely clear: Alexander Graham Bell’s words and actions reflect the Audism, Surdophobia, and Hate Speech that had been at the face of the LEAD-K campaign. Now Cued Speech is forming in Virginia and Illinois—and wants to spread all over America with the help of LEAD-K. It was never about data or improving literacy in reading and writing.
A coalition of activists had been spending a lot of time, energy, and passion to bring the truth about Alexander Graham Bell’s hateful ideology. There are plenty of Deaf artists who drew pictures of how Alexander Graham Bell are dangerous proves effective, with survivors of Alexander Graham Bell gaining greater understanding through their own artwork.
There are plenty of Deaf writers who took it to the streets, social media, and public, showing the truth about Alexander Graham Bell and sends a message onto the platform to distribute truth and challenging the lies that makes Deaf students “successful” with Cued Speech, listening and speaking, and cochlear implants, and the list goes on, making Alexander Graham Bell for the message.
LEAD-K claims that it would support the foundation of Deaf children, and help protect young lives from the destructive effects of Oralism, but Deaf community got fooled badly.
The educational materials would help and empower Deaf people with the facts they need to live healthy, Audism-free lives. We need to continue and stand up against Audism and Surdophobia practice and conquer the language hegemony or oppression.
Now it is time for us to spread the truth. We stand up for social justice! We stand up for ASL justice!
-JT
Copyright © 2018 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
In Response to Steven Snow’s Video
Without Arts, Critical Thinking Would Be Lost
Examine An Allegory of De’VIA Cave: From Present to Futurism
De’VIA (Deaf View/Image Art) coined by nine artists in 1989 helps to create a unique learning environment by bringing out the creative learner in all of us. It is able to do this in three ways. The first way is by not only being a fun but also an interactive way to learn. Second it can borrow and bring in other methods of learning that have already been discussed seamlessly, and finally it allows is to teach each other in a more comfortable environment. Let’s first take a look at why it is healthy and that is where I am a strong believer in Deaf Art. Also, art does use a beloved childhood of mine, but it allows for learning rather than the construction of Deaf mind is to take place. All those De’VIA done by Deaf artists are real also we give things like names, name signs, minor back-stories, etc. We come up with inventive stories of situations that they are going through, or that one is about to die from, and then share these sometimes complex and imaginative stories. That is what exactly Edgar Degas’s quote above points out important phrase to see through inventive stories, “Art is not what you see but what you make others see” touches all the bases.
We share them with our fellow people, often times showing a new or forgotten message that the person is more than happy to learn. A New Wave needs to develop and grow a stronger event with all of this preparation to tell their stories they have created for De’VIA the people are using they may have forgot to realize that they are using the methods they learned from Deaf artists to tell a story about their artworks. To get the ideas of what will happen in the story they may have used the creativeness they exercised during their thinking session into Deaf art, resistance, liberation, and affirmation.
The use of De’VIA for these types of things is not separate from the other things we have talked about today but instead a culmination. De’VIA is what allows us to help teach and learn from another person. If they use art to express their mind you do not understand you repeat the message and then you examine it more. That is the beauty of art. Today you have read why De’VIA helps to create a unique learning environment by bringing out the creative learner in all of us.
First by learning how the use of art as a learning aid can be used, second by understanding how artworks use other methods of practice, and finally you learned by working together. Art can be used to bring everything together and teach people of any age in a fun way. From my observation with De’VIA artists, they construct their experiences with the validity of Deaf experience and address what we the Deaf know, value, and be responsible for our own intellectualism. Our knowledge as Deaf people is chiefly derived from pure reason, which is the final principle of reality.
Our being Deaf is real and true without consideration for emotions. De’VIA has awakened reasoning in Deaf mind and our search for knowing, our desire, and our enlightenment of this vast Art world are but the fabric woven in these strands for many centuries from Plato’s Cratylus to 1880 Milan to Deaf people in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries to Deafhood Foundation.
De’VIA must bring the philosophy of Deaf art, resistance, liberation, and affirmation to a sharp focus; Those current artists does the same for Deaf world with strong message of bringing an enlightenment of the struggle. Those people are known to be in the pursuit of arete, which means reaching the highest human potential in Greek, even at the cost of their own life. For next 30 years, the stories must be carried on and they all come from the beginning.
I would like to paraphrase Michel Foucault (1926-1984) statement by advising Deaf people to purse and recognize the supremacy of arts which has made a difference. It is powerful, the stories of lies and the attempt to redeem the nature of being Deaf through the hearing restoration or invention of cochlear implants must be told. Foucault’s quote, “My general theme is not society, it is true nor false discourses: let me say it is the correlative formation of domains, of objects, and of discourses verifiable and falsifiable which are assignable to them; it is not simply this formation which interests me but the effects of reality which are linked to it”–it is about the organizing principle of power wherein De’VIA can be studied through technologies of power–not progress, not education, not conflict, not struggle and not resistance.
Power creates truth, and this truth produces a function of power. De’VIA creates truth with a function of power. It is impossible to imagine without De’VIA and their influences are most often identified with their topics rather than a method. It will challenge people to question their assumptions about truth for their resistance and stop the power dynamics of cochlear implants, Audism, Oralism, and all. The truth is that De’VIA for the next 30 years is critical because Deaf people exist. It is not an accidental at all and a reason to believe that it is necessary to garner success. Since 134 years ago, the dark side of Milan 1880, De’VIA are the recipe for success to find their magic of many more truth. We must become more committed to arts in support of intellectual freedom, the search for social justice, and find the responsibility for the sake of Deaf people. The truth is that De’VIA has spoken.
-JT
Copyright © Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
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