I was talking to a friend recently about my research work,
and I had a bit of a realization. It wasn't completely 'new' to me, but it
hadn't hit me with such force until I chatted with her about it.
First, just a quick update as to where I am with it all - my
short term aim at the moment is simple: read, read, read! I really need to get
a strong, deep context in place for the resources I have already found. There's
no point in finding all these newspaper articles, court transcripts, and
prisoner petitions about Deaf people if I don't know about the times they were
written in and the structures of organizations that were involved. I know a
good deal already, but I want to know more, to really place myself in the time.
The other thing I'm doing is clarifying and narrowing my
approach - my methodology and theoretical framework, I suppose you'd say, if
you were taking a social science perspective. The thing is that I can't seem to
find any theoretical construct or schema that applies itself to the topic I am
looking at in a helpful way. I've thought about about Foucault, and his
extensive work on the rise of institutions and power, but still at too early a
stage with him to say comfortably that I should incorporate him into a
framework of analysis to be used. In fact, to be honest, I am wary of *any*
theory or schema or construct that I've come across, in the sense of using it
as a tool to analyze, or a lens through which to look through. There's
something about that method that strikes me as prediction of your findings
before you've even looked at what's there.
So for the moment I prefer what I'm thinking of as the 'pure
history' approach - identifying, gathering, analyzing and evaluating historical
sources, with a particular emphasis on sources that at least partly reflect
Deaf people's own experiences. And there are obviously well-worn methodological
categories I will be employing, and ways to interpret this information.
'History from below', critical reading of sources 'against the grain', and so
on. In terms of a theoretical base, I really can't think of anything more
effective, more explanatory and more satisfying to me at the moment than
simply.... a Deaf Studies perspective. Seeing signed languages as real
languages, Deaf people as heirs to and possessors of an authentic culture,
which was formed during the time under study. Perfectly simple - in my mind at
least.
Anyway - back to the conversation with my friend; and to the
sources that I'm cathering. What really excites me in these sources are the
glimpses into life for Deaf people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A
police statement reveals details about family life; a newspaper article about a
trial shows how the Deaf witness or accused communicated - and how that was
perceived by hearing people.
But a problem with this is; *very few* of these sources
arise from, shall we say, peaceful, non-problematic circumstances. Police
records, prison records, court records - these files and documents come into
existence through conflict, disagreement, and often violence and abuse. The
historical record seems almost silent about Deaf people's day to day,
hassle-free, happy and productive working lives... and it's what to do with
those fragments of discord and conflict that I need to think deeply about.
I recently came across a Circuit Court file from the 1920s ,
where a Deaf girl had been raped near her home in Co Clare. the girl, who had
been to St Mary's, rushed back home to
her father where she wrote out what had happened to her on a piece of paper.
The father wrote back to her asking who the attacker had been, would she
recognize him again; the girl told her father she would have to go live with
her aunt for a time, possibly out of fear of her attacker, possibly also from
the shame that such a crime may attach to the victim in those times (and
indeed, are those times really gone)? Now, these details - the story of this
young woman, assaulted in such a horrific way, her conversation in writing with
her no doubt devastated father - were not given in detail in the local press.
In fact the girl's full name was not even mentioned. Only in the Circuit Court
file in the National Archives did I find all this detail and more, written up
in police statements and court transcripts.
But I also found... the piece of paper that the girl and her
father used to communicate. That extraordinarily private moment between father
and daughter, because of the unique circumstances of Deaf-hearing family
communication at the time, was captured and preserved, probably seen by no one
for eighty or more years. And I get to see it. To touch it.
I've thought a lot about the importance of documents like
these - the fact that I am honored to be able to access such intimate and
sensitive details about people long dead and buried - but I have found out so
many similar stories, so many handwritten testimonies of violence and abuse
from Deaf women, that I wonder am I able to handle it. A straight hearing male,
separated from these Deaf women by a century or more. How can I even begin to
think I can tell their story? But if I cannot, what can I do with these
documents of pain and suffering?
For now all I can do is liaise with the Irish Deaf Women's
Group. Ask the experts how to sensitively deal with these women's stories in
the context of my work. And to pass on
whatever I can to them so that these stories are given to those who may be able
to benefit from them and remember proudly the ones who told them in the first
place.
And one thing I must do, constantly, at all times: give
thanks for the privilege of sharing, separated by time and place, these most
sensitive stories of suffering. And in all my interactions with these sources
and those that I can make aware of them - to show respect.
