#edcuate

Subaltern Studies emerged around 1982 as a series of journal articles published by Oxford University Press in India.  A group of Indian scholars trained in the west wanted to reclaim their history.  Its main goal was to retake history for the underclasses, for the voices that had not been heard previous.  Scholars of the subaltern hoped to break away from histories of the elites and the Eurocentric bias of current imperial history.  In the main, the wrote against the “Cambridge School” which seemed to uphold the colonial legacy—i.e. it was elite-centered.  Instead, they focused on subaltern in terms of class, caste, gender, race, language and culture.  They espoused the idea that there may have been political dominance, but that this was not hegemonic.  The primary leader was Ranajit Guha who had written works on peasant uprisings in India.  Another of the leading scholars of subaltern studies is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.  She draws on a number of theoretical positions in her analysis of Indian history: deconstruction, marxism, feminism. She was highly critical of current histories of India that were told from the vantage point of the colonizers and presented a story of the colony via the British adminstrators (Young, 159).  What she and other historians (including Ranajit Guha) wanted was to reclaim their history, to give voice to the subjected peoples.  Any other history merely reconstructs imperialist hegemony and does not give voice to the people—those who resisted, those who supported, those who experienced colonial incursion.  According to the Subaltern Studies group, this history is designed to be a “contribution made by people on their own, that it, independently of the élite” (quoted in Young 160).  They did this by establishing a journal out of Oxford, Delhi and Australia and called it Subaltern Studies to write a history against the grain and restore history to the subordinated.  In other words, to give the common people back their agency.

From Here

I wanted somewhere where I could focus on the people’s stories. I want to empower people to educate themselves and others on the ways of the world, and what we can do to make a difference. I am a feminist, I am a humanitarian, and I am an advocate for the end of social injustice.

This is in response to this post: http://irrationallylucid.tumblr.com/post/15790928518/absolutely-amazing and I secured Ray's permission to publish this, because it's important to me.

Getting a cochlear implant, it's a choice. What it can do is impressive, but the problem with that video is that most hearing people think that is what deaf people NEED. Granted, that is what most hearing people think anyways. Cochlear implants are a type of hearing aid, they're not a cure, but they're viewed as that. They're also an intense surgical procedure and non removable, and are a limited version of hearing. Also, a huge amount of deaf people aren't even interested in them. They don't work for all deaf people either, only for a certain type of hearing loss. There is a huge amount of controversy surrounding cochlear implants.

Deaf is a culture, as well as a hearing loss. Everyone in this culture is different, some deaf people are Deaf with a capital 'D', others don't identify themselves that way at all. Some people are born deaf, some become it later in their lives. In the classes I've spent the last 4 years in, we've learned about it. The Deaf consider themselves a linguistic minority, rather than a disability. Generally speaking, in this post and for the sake of education, I'm using very broad strokes and it's in terms of America and what I know of the deaf here in our country. 

Hearing people in America have spent over a century oppressing d/Deaf people, usually by accident but also, sometimes, by choice.  They think the deaf need to be taken care of. Generaly, the deaf don't agree. ASL was taken away from Deaf Schools. Deaf people have been forced to learn to read lips, how to speak, while being told not to use ASL, their own language. I can't even begin to tell you how difficult that is. Literally, I cannot tell you, because I've never gone through it. But it's ridiculously difficult. Think of how you'd feel if people took your language away and told you it was so you'd be more like them, because you need to be fixed, you don't just work the way you are. 

ASL is, by the way, a language on it's own. Most people think it's just English on the hands, and that is terribly wrong. There is different grammar, and syntax, there are phrases that belong exclusively to ASL, and it's a visual language, all of which makes it different than English. While I'm on it, there is a universal sign language, but ASL isn't it. Countries have their own signed languages, although ASL is used in the USA, Canada, some parts of Mexico, and a lot of other third world and other countries where the Peace Corps has taken it. British Sign Language is completely, utterly foreign to me. I'd have an easier time in France, because ASL was started using Old French Sign thanks to Laurent Clerc. Deaf culture is connected by their language, and the heritage that comes with that. I've never found anything quite like it. Hearing is something people with the ability to hear can't imagine living without, it's how we connect to each other the most strongly. It isn't an attempt to be terrible, thinking someone who can't hear would want to, but not all of them do. A huge amount of the deaf don't. In fact, they're very proud of being Deaf, and they should be. 

I'm hearing. I'm just studying to be an interpreter. I still listen to music, use English more than ASL (partly because I don't have enough people to use it with), and my two cents about this stuff only extends so far. But one of the things that is really important to me is to share what I've learned so that less hearing people are ignorant about something that so many of them don't even know they should learn about.