Préface de Carol Padden
Following the death in 1789 of Abbé de l'Epée, the first teacher of deaf pupils renowned in France and beyond, revolutionaries committed to founding national institutes for the education of deaf pupils. There was little doubt about their ability to integrate as full citizens and communicate fully in sign language and written French. One hundred years later, deaf writers and journalists were editing journals and penning articles about the impact of politics on the education and social opportunities of deaf people. But in broader contexts, deaf people's capacities were increasingly reframed within newly established, exclusionary, and othering scientific and medical categories. What made such a reversal possible?
Deaf People, Language, and Emancipation in Modern France, 1789-1914 investigates how defining deafness was rarely about an auditory variation; teachers, physicians, legal advisors, and governmental representatives understood instead a human variation in the light of a range of norms, expectations, and misconceptions. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary debates about Deaf identity, the book considers how such understandings of deafness developed, and how deaf people variously challenged these fields of knowledge and their purported expertise to redefine and claim equal rights. As a history that makes space for the diversity of deaf and hearing people's aspirations, Sabine Arnaud aims to give space to figures who defy linear visions of history. Much beyond the debates about the teaching of speech or the use of sign language, this book analyzes the broad creation of sign language and fingerspelling systems, deaf people's command of rhetoric and poetics, their mobilization of literary tools, and broad exercise of citizenship.
These distinctive developments in the history of deaf people's empowerment challenge and broaden current conceptions of identity politics. Such an historical approach is crucial in order to understand the emergence of a deaf community and to rethink the different and often contradictory readings of deafness in medical or cultural terms that we are faced with to this day.
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Citizenship to Abnormality, 1789–1914
1. 1789–1810: The Invention of a People
From a Police Report to History with a Capital H
How an Anecdote Became a Founding Moment
“The French must vanquish everything, even the irregularities of nature”
Petitioning: Deaf-Mute Pupils’ Dedication to the Revolution and to Education
Deaf-Mute People’s Commitment to Citizenship and the Law
The Deaf-Mute Person, the Idiot, and the Ordinary Child
Itard and Victor
Sicard and His “Oracles”
2. 1764–1830: Sign Languages and Linguistic Expectations
Establishing Sign Language as a Methodological Tool for Communication in French
Arbitrary or Natural Signs, an Eloquent Dispute
The Order of Signs
Exploring the Potential of Signs, 1820–1835
“Expeditious Signs” and “Tachygraphy”
Signing Sound
Writing Signs and the Critique of Logocentrism
Bébian’s Mimography
Piroux’s Tachymimography
3. 1820–1880: Negotiating and Asserting Equality
Morals versus Rights: Inventing of Deaf-Mute People’s “Inner Nature”
Piroux and the Conception of a Support Network
Berthier: Equality Now!
Penal and Moral Issues
The Civil Code
Political Rights
Dividing State Responsibilities
The Rise of Medical Expertise
Second Round and Escalation
The Rivalries between Different Authorities
Imaginings of Colonization in Deaf-Mute Education
4. 1840–1880: Across Languages—Enunciation and Creativity
The Gift of the Verb
A New Generation of Sign Language Dictionaries
Striving Toward Bilingual Dictionaries
The Everlasting Faith in Methodological Signs
The Scope of Dactylology
Natural Sign Language’s Manifold Values
The First Sign Language Grammar
The Physiology of Language
Signing Sounds and Speech
Phonomimy and the Art of Telling
“They will speak”
5. 1880–1900: Rising Up in an Era of Reforms
Creating an Educational Model: A Political Endeavor
Rediscovering Another Pedagogical Tradition
The Encounter of Otology, Laryngology, and the Teaching of Speech
Surprises and Mirages
The Different Views of Emancipation
6. 1890–1914: Poetics of Emancipation versus Therapeutic Hygiene
How an Auditory Variation Became “Backwardness”
Poetics against All Odds
Reversing the Gaze
Deconstructing the Expert Terminology
The Mistaken Assimilation of Equality into Uniformity
Concluding Remarks
References
Index