One of the interesting things about private space in the context of HAD is that it becomes an all deaf space. Despite the fact that there were four hearing people in the room this Tuesday (three interpreters and me), we were all considered part of the deaf cultural world because we knew various sign languages and were supportive of deaf rights. This effectively made the room a safe space. It’s only in this sort of safe space that you start to see an interesting sort of dialogue regarding hearing people. For example when the group was discussing the new website, one of the vice presidents “L” (his sign name is an L on his chin) stood up and passionately argued that they should not delegate the task of designing the website to a hearing person because they wouldn’t put their heart into it and therefore wouldn’t do a good job. There are several interesting things about this comment. First is the word “hearing”. Most people who can hear wouldn’t think of themselves as “hearing” but rather as “normal” or “not deaf”. However in both ASL and VSL “hearing” doesn’t carry the connotation of normal, it’s simply the opposite of deaf. Second, the comment appears to be somewhat anti-hearing. However what’s interesting was that it was automatically understood that the four hearing people in the room were excluded from that comment. In fact there was considerable discussion about the importance of the interpreters in making the website. Thus L’s comment was not a blanket statement about all hearing people. Rather “hearing” was used to refer solely to those outside of the deaf cultural world -- hearing people who don’t understand deaf rights or know sign language. While L’s comment was not reflection of hatred of hearing people, it’s unlikely that he would have made it outside of a deaf space because the nuances of the word hearing are easily misinterpreted. It is hard to distinguish “hearing” as in “can hear” and “hearing” as in “not part of the deaf cultural world” because they are exactly the same sign and can only be distinguished by context. (note: that is not to say that anti hearing biases don’t exist, but rather that some things that could be interpreted as anti hearing are not and have to be understood in the cultural context of the deaf world).
In terms of physical space the most obvious thing is that the DP Hanoi office is significantly bigger then HAD’s office. Over double the size. I’m guessing this is for three different reasons. First DP Hanoi receives funding from the government while HAD does not. This could be a reflection of the stronger lobbing power of DP Hanoi, it’s size, the difficulties of deaf membership of HAD in communicating in Vietnamese or a whole host of different factors. Second the DP Hanoi office is used on a full time basis- it has permanent interns and officials who work on increasing publicity and drafting project proposals. In contrast Phoung told me that many days there is nobody in the HAD office. Regardless of the reasons behind HAD not having permanent office workers this means that having a huge office for HAD would be a waste of resources. Third DP Hanoi’s office has to serve as a meeting room with foreign NGO’s that help support the organization. When HAD needs to host foreigners they simply have them met in the DP Hanoi office which means that their actual office doesn’t have to be as big.
Another interesting thing about physical space is the way it relates to signing. Because the HAD office is a long thin rectangle it’s often hard for all of the board members to have a clear view of each other. Therefore a lot of time is spent shifting people’s attention to the right person either through waving, taping or asking somebody else to wave/tap for you. Sometimes there are three or more people who have something important to say so the room is filled with waving hands and people signing “look at me!”. My ASL classrooms back home are always arranged in a large circle to avoid this problem, however here the space prevents us from doing that. If the space were set up differently the meetings would probably be somewhat more efficient (although taping would still be necessary to break people away from side conversations). I’ll be curious to see how the space for their large Sunday meeting is set up and weather they have any creative ways of dealing with the problem of sight lines. In the US when there is a large group of deaf people one person will stand in the front and act as a mirror, copying what people say so that everyone can see. This can be disconcerting at first (it’s weird to talk and see someone else say the same thing while you are speaking) but it is an efficient way to deal with the problem physical spaces present. I’m interested to see if this technique will be used or some other innovative approach will be used instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment