Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on May 21, 2007
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2007 12(3):406; doi:10.1093/deafed/enm016
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Looking Inside or Outside? A Review of Inside Deaf Culture
Teachers College, Columbia University
C. Padden, & T. Humphries (2006). Inside Deaf Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 208 pages. Textbook paperback. $15.95.
In Inside Deaf Culture, the authors seek to connect events in American Deaf culture not into a history, but a chronicle of its interfaces with the American hearing culture that attest to Deaf culture's persistent power in (re)defining Deaf people.
Deaf culture, the authors suggest, began at residential schools for the deaf in early 19th century, where deaf children were resuscitated from isolation in families and society; physically and sexually abused; and segregated by race, gender, and language by school administrators. The result of the interface with hearing people is the reproduction of their beliefs and practices in Deaf culture. Deaf people formed clubs, which reproduced racist, sexist, and language school practices and declined with changing economic conditions. They recorded their experiences, talents, and sign language in hearing people-created theaters, halls, and visual and acoustic technologies. Deaf theater proceeded from performances at schools, readings at Gallaudet theater, and interpreted Deaf community theater to shared voice with hearing actors at the National Theatre of the Deaf.
This interface, the authors argue, has pitfalls for Deaf culture. Although Deaf culture provides sanctuary for deaf individuals, it creates segregation from the hearing world and faces future struggles. The recent public recognition of ASL creates anxieties for personal identity and literary meaning. The demise of Deaf clubs makes the community more fluid, often found in non-Deaf community spaces. Deaf identity, sign language, and Deaf culture are currently under attack by medical advances, such as the Genome Project and cochlear implants, and social acknowledgments of cultural diversity.
Although the book focuses on the origin, location, and sustenance of Deaf culture and its interfaces with other cultures, it does not provide sufficient information on the constituents of Deaf culture and its relation to Deaf people's "ethos" and "volksgeist." It is uneven in culture creation, where symbols are created and allocated to entities and actions, and in culture change, where symbolic meanings and allocations alter by interfacing with other people and cultures in space and time. Deaf culture does not reproduce, but filters and reinterprets, hearing culture in accordance to its symbolic order. Although the book showed connections between Deaf culture and mainstream culture, it does not sufficiently relate how the experiences of Deaf people in families, schools, and society create symbols that become part of Deaf culture, and how its meanings and allocations are altered by internal and external changes.
In addition, the book has a few questionable analyses and a curious omission. For instance, an economic explanation is employed in the history of Deaf clubs, but many Deaf clubs were formed under conditions that did not match descriptions in the book. The book discussed about medicine's threats to Deaf culture that are unfounded; the history of technology and the deaf shows that technologies have not exterminated but are diffused into the culture. The Deaf President Now movement is omitted but is significant in that it led to the mainstreaming of Deaf voice in American society with recognition of ASL and Deaf community and culture. The authors could use these examples and attest to the power of culture in keeping a people together in the face of external changes.
For readers interested in American Deaf culture, the book contains many accounts that are newly uncovered and serves as a useful addition to Deaf Studies literature.
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