Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> I greet you with peace. My name is Tiffany Steinwert, and I am the dean of Hendricks
Chapel. And it is my privilege and pleasure to introduce to you tonight one of my dearest
friends and colleagues, the Reverend Dr. Kirk VanGilder.
I first met Kirk in graduate school where we were studying practical theology together.
I say that at some point I was supposed to be the teacher and Kirk was the learner, but
in fact we were always co‑learners together.
I soon found out that if I had a question about
anything, and I mean anything, Kirk was the person to ask. He today is one of our nation's
leading practical theologians. From his engaging
scholarship to brilliant insights, Kirk shakes
the foundation not just of the church, but of theological establishments. He asks questions
no one has dared to ask before and suggests answers in a nonchalant, unassuming way that
has the power to revolutionize not just the field, but the world.
Kirk VanGilder was born hard of hearing before losing more hearing in late adolescence and
transitioning into the Deaf world. He is an ordained United Methodist clergyperson and
has served as a minister in Deaf churches in Baltimore
and Pasadena, Maryland, as well as a campus
minister to Gallaudet University. And what is not included in the script I prepared
is he also served as co‑pastor of Cambridge Welcoming Ministries with me. And I don't
know how I left that out of the official bio. Kirk has also traveled to Kenya, Zimbabwe
and Turkey to work with Deaf community development and support.
His dissertation, which has now been published as a book, is called Making Sadza with Deaf
Zimbabwean Women: A Missiological Reorientation of Practical Theological Method. Kirk hopes
to continue his travels and research in other countries, as well as present his findings
and experience to a wide variety of scholarly and non-scholarly audiences.
The event tonight is a wonderful collaboration,
across campus, of many different departments
and offices coming together: Hendricks Chapel, the Interfaith Student Council, Interfaith
Student Alliance, the Secular Student Alliance,
the Disability Student Union, the Disability
Cultural Center, the Center On Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies, the Department
of Religion, the Beyond Compliance Coordinating Committee, and 'Cuse ASL.
So without further ado, I invite you to welcome Dr. Kirk VanGilder.
[Applause]
>> I'm actually going to wait just a couple of
minutes to see if we can take care of technical issues with the CART that is supposed to be
showing up on the screen here. So hold on for just a second, we'll see what happens.
I know some people are actually going to be dependent on reading the captions as they go ‑‑
here we go, I see them on the screen right now, so...
Tiffany, thank you so much for the introduction. Her name sign is indicative of her height.
[laughter] Something related to religion tonight as well
as disability, Deaf secularism, and identity. So let's see how many pieces of that I have
to ‑‑ let's see if I could mix them all together, juggle them up in the air and drop
them on the floor and put them together and create something that's a synthesis of the
diverse issues and the ideas and put them into one brief lecture.
This is the task that Tiffany gave to me, so this is actually an open topic that I would
like to have, a dialogue with each other tonight.
Maybe I can give you some ideas of what I'm
thinking about to lead the discussion, but to start with I'd like to talk about what
conversations are happening here at Syracuse University. And what the campus is facing,
what issues the campus is facing -- what issues the campus is facing within the community
of Syracuse University. So here is my fancy title, Without Walls.
It should be Without Walls and then colon, what temporary Deaf spaces can tell us about
managing identity politics.
So identity labels, as you can see on this slide here, hello, my name is, and then I
have to pick one identity to put on that sticker
when I introduce myself to a new community,
hello, my name is... What identity do I pick? Out of all the collections that make up who
you are and your identity, as you can see up here we have a selection from disabled,
to jock, to Latina, to blind, how do you pick one of those?
Maybe you have multiple identities
within one person. So to say hello, my name is Kirk, what does that mean to you to know
that I label myself as Kirk? Or maybe from your perspective, what does
that mean when you think of what a Kirk is? And then what does that say when I say my
name is Kirk, what does that mean for me? That's the identity I have chosen to label
myself with. So we start to use labels to describe who
we are and then we get a vision of all the different labels that we attach to ourselves.
And we attach to other people. We love labels and we also hate labels.
America has a love‑hate relationship with labels. But labels are very vital. Very critical.
And we use them -- we have to embrace them to label ourselves. But if you, conversely,
label someone else, that person may not take that label right away. So we're going to be
talking about identity and we're kind of thinking
about the vocabulary and the language we use
and concepts we use about identity. But language can also be a way to segregate ourselves.
And can have a negative impact on how we identify
ourselves and what groups we choose to identify with.
Maybe we have multiple names and multiple identities, and how do we begin to manage
these multiple identities to converse with people and to share part of who we are? And then
when you meet another person, or several other people in the community, how do you develop
community, and group identity, with everyone having their individual labels, and the many
identities that they have, and the plethora of entities we bring together, how do we,
as a community, get group identity? An identity that label does not have to be
permanent. Who you are right here, right now, tonight listening to my presentation is very
different from who you were yesterday afternoon, or maybe after this lecture, when you sit
and have a nice chat with a friend, or when you go home and you visit your family, who
you are in that situation, or who you are when you go out to party tonight, is different
than who you are right now. So that changes ‑‑ is influenced by who
you are dialoguing with and it's not a permanent thing, it's fluid, it's very flexible, it
moves very easily from one identity to another. So we have that love‑hate relationship with
labels, and those labels can be fixed, those identities can be fixed, but
they don't have to be fixed. They don't always have to be fixed.
Labels are fixed, but identities are not fixed. Labels are used to describe identities. So
that's where we see a problem. A tension, how you understand yourself in a diverse world,
as a person who is very diverse yourself. So on the slide here I have about 20 or 25
different labels that encompass culture, disability,
you know, Deaf identity or blind, gender identity,
political identity and socio‑economic class identity as well. So there's a selection of
identities up here on the slide, and those are embraced by us.
And those are sometimes identities that are given to us, generationally, and sometimes
that we create ourselves, or maybe from high
school to college we transition to an identity,
or college to graduate school. These are identities that we create for ourselves.
So when you leave high school you can say, okay, I've left high school, high school is
in the past, I'm moving on to college. Maybe as an undergrad you were party hardy instead
of studying hard or maybe not, I don't know, it depends on the individuals in the room
here, but you can recreate your identity yourself. You select the labels and you have to ‑‑
you can inherit those labels as well. So think about how labels fuse with identities as you
can see on the slide here. What often happens and why we often despair
and disparage these labels is that when we try
to see each of these identities as individual,
society has specific definitions for these labels. Most of the time. Most of the time
when they say this identity is such and such, they mean a specific definition. But it's
an impossibility to have these identities all converge. And again, it creates a false
sense of segregation. It would be nice if we had these specific
lines between different identities, but by identity lines blur, it's very messy and you
try to pick these identities and you can have some complex situations arise.
My first class at Gallaudet University, I walked right in, sat down, and a discussion
ensued, everybody had to introduce themselves. And that class was a required class, it was
cultural identity, and it was very open, it was
kind of a who you are, this first assignment
was to write a two page paper about who you are. And then we had to share what we had
written with the class. So we kind of opened up about who we were
and delved into each other's identities, and one student came up to the front of the class
and said this is my name, and she identified herself as a straight woman but people often
considered her as lesbian, she says. Because, she says, my boyfriend is a woman. And half
the class kind of went huh? What? A straight woman who most people think is a lesbian,
because her boyfriend is a woman. So we had to kind of unpack that and see what
that meant. Identifying straight means she identified as a woman, as of the sex of woman,
but she was transgendered and she, and ‑‑
I'm sorry, the person that she was in a relationship
with is a boyfriend who is transgendered but who
was a performing artist who did not perform
as that specific gender. So she was attracted to the male gender, not
the actual sex of that person. So she identified
herself as straight. But people read her as
a lesbian because they saw who she was in a relationship with.
Then they were thinking, well, this is a woman
with another woman, so she introduced herself
to class this way, and I thought, wow, that is fantastic!
I mean, she has a clear understanding
of her identity, and I was automatically able to look around the room and see who had not
even thought about these kind of identities issues before.
It was just a great opening class, and it was just a great way to kind of open the box
and unpack what is an identity, and how are identities put together.
I'm going to introduce the concept of Deaf gain here with this slide. I'll let you read
the quote here.
The quote, it says: "at the onset of his Deafness, and in parentheses,
performing artist Aaron Williamson consulted many doctors, and they
all told him the same thing: you're losing your hearing.
He wondered why it was that not
a single doctor told him he was gaining his Deafness."
So this is kind of reframing of the expectation
of what hearing loss is. He had the opposite
of hearing loss--is Deaf gain. When you lose something, in a gradual way, then you perhaps
benefit something and you gain a different identity. So that concept actually is very
popular right now in the scholarly world, cultural identity and production and how that
is produced and shown to the larger society. So if a person is Deaf, then that means that
no one else in society compared to this person has that Deafness.
Because we are Deaf, we give this and without us, without us Deaf people in the society,
there would not be hearing people, for example, you wouldn't have the dichotomy.
So Williamson came up with this idea about Deaf gain, very interesting. There's a picture
of him here, and he lives in England, in London.
And he got a license to be a street performer,
a busker. London is kind of an interesting city, if you visit there and you're walking
the streets you will see various people performing,
and Williamson was one of them. So he set
up an old phonograph, with, kind of, a very very old record player, an antique, and it
would play opera music. And he dressed to the nines in a tuxedo, would begin to sing
with the music. Completely Deaf. With no idea whether what he was pronouncing vocally was
matching what was being played on the ‑‑ with the music.
So he would just go ahead and perform very seriously as opera singers want to do, and then
he would notice people's reactions, their facial expression, just saying what the heck, this
guy is not matching the music at all, it sounds terrible, should we say something to him.
And as the performance was going on he would completely seriously continue to sing and
he would see that will people in the audience were realizing that he was a very lousy musician
and then he would have a break and intermission he would start signing away with a friend
and everyone in the audience would realize oh, my gosh, he's Deaf.
And so everyone else, all of the hearing people, let's say, who had just been saying what a
lousy musician he was were completely embarrassed,
shame‑faced, sheepishly saying, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry,
I didn't realize you were Deaf, and they would hand him a bunch of money. [laughter]
So he would just ‑‑ very clever, very clever, clever gig there. But, so he would
react to the crowd and how he ‑‑ how they would be making assumptions of him as
a musician, a singer, and how they would change as soon as they realized he was Deaf.
So he performed as a Deaf person, he was performing artist.
So he wasn't presenting himself as
a Deaf person as he was singing, he was presenting
himself as a performing artist. So to think
about the idea of Deaf gain is to think about the flip of Deaf being losing something. But
think of it as being Deaf, and gaining something in becoming Deaf.
The two professors on the slide here are both Gallaudet University professors and they have
really delved into the scholarship, the idea of identity and Deaf gain.
And liken this to the idea of helping people who are trying to be snowboarders.
So, how one person looks at Deaf snowboarders competing as they're going ‑‑ I see we can see
on TV on sports right now, on the X‑Games you can see Deaf people who are snowboarding
and how they adapt and accommodate, how they're able to read the snow by feel, with balance
and vibration. And then compared to competitors who are hearing,
they are able to maneuver and navigate through the snow by hearing. So they can hear where
the snow is weak and where the snow is strong.
Because they're able to take those cues aurally,
so these two Gallaudet University professors,
again, looked at Deaf snowboarders and realized
their reaction time was much quicker than the hearing snowboarders. Because they were
able to rely more quickly on their feeling, rather than the hearing competitors who had
to listen to the snow and be able to maneuver through it.
There was a Swedish coach who was ‑‑ who trained their hearing snowboarders to
put earplugs in, forcing them to begin to develop that sense of being able to rely on
their feeling. And their competition and their
ability to compete at a higher level increased.
So that's just one example of Deaf gain, and how you look at a situation and see what Deaf
people are doing, and see that maybe they're doing something much more efficiently than
the everyday common hearing person or the everyday Deaf person who might not be in that
specific field, to see what they are learning and what they can benefit the rest of the
community, instead of looking at Deaf people as oh,
my gosh, those poor people, oh, my gosh, that poor
man, he cannot sing, all they have to do is they have to, you know, go through the snow
by feeling as opposed to saying, you know what? They might be able to do something much more
efficiently, and can we apply that to everyone else, and we can help hearing people take
advantage of that. So the researchers are looking at what Deaf
people bring from our unique experience of being Deaf, what we're able to provide to
the world at large. So that's just one example. But to think bigger picture...
Biodiversity. When we think about the environment,
environmental issues, everything depends on
everything else. Things in an ecosystem are interdependent on each other. This is the ‑‑
the fish depend on the water and the currents,
and the currents clean the water, and everything
is interrelated at the Great Barrier Reef. If the water wasn't right, the fish would
the die, if temperature is too high, the fish would the die. They need each other.
So, the concept of biodiversity demonstrates that it's critical to have diversity,
and human diversity follows the same logic.
So, in studying ecology and ecosystems at the
Great Barrier Reef, this is eroded and biodiversity,
everything has been dying slowly.
And same thing with Brazil in the rainforest,
and the number of unique species has been greatly, drastically
decreasing. That's because the rainforest is dying.
So when we think of human diversity—really the goal is to become more conformist.
If that happens, then we die. The biodiversity dies within human biodiversity. So when we
think of it as a larger system, a flourishing system, the point is that for a system to
be able to flourish, there needs to be a great
deal of diversity. And when everything is whittled
down and weeded out to become the same, that takes away from the vibrancy of the society
and the doesn't allow it to flourish. You need to have diversity in order to have growth.
And that's the point of having a healthy system. Instead of having a goal for everybody to
become the same, that leads to a dead end. Everything needs to be changed to be diverse,
because that biodiversity is key when imagining a society that values ‑‑ has positive
value. It's the same concept with Deaf gain, we bring to society something that society
can use, Deaf people and disabled people. Without that, biodiversity decreases. So those
things that we bring to society, if they're missing,
that represents a partial collapse of society.
Without what we contribute, that part is missing,
and diversity is less.
This is all part of biodiversity and a network of interdependence.
If one piece is missing, then diversity is lessened greatly.
So how do we deal with this on an individual level? The answer is pretty interesting.
Dr. Joane Nagel, from the University of Kansas,
she's a sociologist, is pictured on the slide,
and below her is Dr. Richard Clark Eckert from the University of Wisconsin in Richmond.
They have a concept of a portfolio of identities.
Dr. Joane Nagel is hearing, and Dr. Eckert
is Deaf. They have suggested the idea of a portfolio of identities.
If you're an art major, architecture major, a business major even, writing major, you have a portfolio.
If you're a photographer, you'll have a portfolio,
and that will display your best work that
you've selected from your entire body of work. So when people want to see your work before
they hire you as a photographer or whatever, then you have something to demonstrate, and
it's ready to go. And that shows your best self, the portfolio.
Depending on the job, you may prioritize a particular picture over another picture.
You know, you might be hired as a wedding photographer,
and so you would want to prioritize showing
examples of couples that you've already taken pictures of.
You would want to show that right
up front in the interview. Or same thing with a newspaper reporter. You know, if they're
going to be hired as a newspaper reporter, someone would want to put their best news
photos up front, rather than their wedding photos. There's a variety of different skills
that photographers can possess, but which one
they might put up front would change depending
on the situation, whichever one applies to the situation that they're trying for.
So the identity portfolio is the concept of having
all the labels that we accept for ourselves.
The big question in the Deaf Black community is: which are you first, are you Black first
or are you Deaf first? That's a very common question in the Black Deaf community. Most
in the Black Deaf community reject that question altogether.
They're both. And that's all there
is to it. And you can't prioritize one over the other, being Black or being Deaf.
And when the Black Deaf community is together as a family, they feel that as being Black
and Deaf rather than just being around Black people or just being around Deaf people.
In Gallaudet most of the students are white, maybe a Black Deaf student would feel more
Deaf in that situation than Black because they're more aware of the racial difference
in that setting. So how you prioritize your identities sometimes
you can't in situations like that. The more healthy way to manage the variety of identities
is to have this concept of a portfolio of identities. And that includes your individual
identities and how you prioritize them differently depending on the situation.
You might ‑‑ you don't stop being one identity in order to become another identity,
but you might prioritize a particular identity
over another depending on the situation that you're
in, and that's just a way to manage conflicting identities, through that portfolio.
So we're going to talk about the idea of power and how you have a discourse about power.
How do you manage these multiple identities, and how you interact with the world, where
perhaps the world does not value one of your identities as much as another one.
Up on the slide we have bell hooks, and she teaches at Berea University. She is looking
at the topic of postmodern and postmodern blackness. A lot of Black scholars say they
don't value that idea ‑‑ value that discussion
of other, or mostly that's focusing on people
who are European, or some other thing. So Black scholars don't value the concept of
postmodernism, but bell hooks disagrees, she
talks about the idea of difference and otherness
that you can't really separate the category of race or gender or Black, if you forget
to talk about what it means to be Black or what it means to be a woman, then you're missing
one piece of that the discussion. And other conversations may be talking about
different identities and they overlook a discussion
that doesn't include Black or women, for example.
So you can't look at one piece of who the you are without also talking about the other
pieces. So that fits the model of the portfolio
that I was just mentioning, and how the identities
interact is not always an equal way, and there is power in that conversation.
There is also another scholar here by the the last name of Spivak from Columbia University.
She wrote a very groundbreaking essay, entitled Can the Subaltern Speak?
Can that subaltern speak? So her concern is not that it's a yes/no
answer, that's not the kind of question that
she was posing in her essay, they of course can speak, but her concern was more, is anyone
listening to the subaltern? Is anyone listening
to what they have to say? That was her point.
So to answer the question, can the subaltern speak, her point is more, let's hang on here
just a second, the people that we are studying, who are oppressed, we are the oppressors,
we're looking at what these oppressed people, what their lives mean, who they are, and we
never ask them to speak for themselves. There is
this scholarly dialogue about what's happening
and what's happening with the subaltern, but we're not including them in the discussion.
Their self-expression not included in that conversation, and that's what her concern
was; it's not a yes no question, instead it's an excuse me, let's step aside and let's let
the people who we are studying, let's let them speak for themselves.
So her goal, her agenda is postcolonial studies, and she wants to move aside from that and
have the experts step aside and let the subaltern
people develop their own expression, let them
figure out what they're going and where they've come from.
And that the experts should not look over them as oppressors and discuss their lives,
but should listen to them and they should ‑‑ experts should also not write the meaning
of the subaltern's life, but let the subaltern culture talk about their meaning for them.
So the question is more, is anyone listening. And I hope so, but often no one's listening
to subalterns speak. Her point overall, again, is to just step back and let these people
speak for themselves. We talk about the concept of agency, and it's
one thing to tell the public narrative, but the other issue is to actually become the
guiding light of your own agency, to invent your own story.
I could talk about my experience
as being oppressed, and how I've been oppressed,
but if I can't change my story, ultimately,
I'm still oppressed. So something simple as letting people speak
about their oppressed experience is not enough. You have to allow them to write their own
story, and to be in control of how their story is ending and how it's being shared. It's
a very big challenge and it's a very powerful connection between discourse and power. So
letting people speak for themselves, and also
letting their stories guide them, guide themselves.
Before we predetermine where their life is going and how their life will end.
So that's a big concern of this scholar, Spivak.
One more thing from Deaf studies on this slide here.
We're going to be speaking about transnational Deaf identity here, and transnational is a
very hot topic in the field of scholarly research
right now, and it's looking at how, for example,
the African American experience and the African
experience and the African Cuban experience,
how they are similar. And how ‑‑ and how their identities are networked. And each
of them has a unique identity and they each have their unique experiences, but there are
some similarities and how their identities are shaped.
And the transnational Deaf identity studies is, in fact, very similar. Deaf people, as
they travel the world and meet people who are Deaf from other countries, even though
they each speak a different sign language, they have each been brought up in a different
culture, and have had different experiences
growing up, and they have quite a few differences,
there is still an automatic connection between Deaf people from different countries because
they have kinship. They have an automatic connection.
This gentleman at the top of the slide, Amos Draper, is from the 1800s. In 1889 he traveled
to the first international Deaf Congress, and that was happening in France. On the way,
he stopped by London, and he presented to an audience of working class Deaf British
people. And their sign language is very different than American Sign Language, so of course
they somehow made themselves understood. Amos Draper was a very well‑educated leader in
the Deaf community, but the people in the audience were factory workers, working‑class
Deaf British people. And in America the culture was ‑‑ there
was quite a bit of support for people who were Deaf, and in Britain it was a very different
experience. But what Amos Draper shared with the
audience was a quote from William Shakespeare,
on the slide it's, "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
And to Amos Draper, that one touch was being Deaf. He stood up there as an American Deaf
man and said, "I'm Deaf," and said to the British people, "you are Deaf, and we are kin."
And if you look at how Deaf people the world over connect with each other, it's very fascinating.
I've gone to Kenya, I've traveled to Zimbabwe,
and I've also been to Turkey. And I've worked
with Deaf communities in those three countries.
And each of course had their different language
than what I was used to as American Sign Language,
they each had their own culture, their environment,
their values, everything was very different
than my experience, socio‑economic status was very different, the political, the national
power was quite diverse in these three countries,
there were many things that on paper should
have kept us apart, but the one thing that bonded us instantly was, we were all Deaf.
We had two weeks together in one of these places, never spent any time apart, and at
the end of that time we were all in tears because we had to leave each other.
I went to Zimbabwe and I worked with a group of Deaf and hearing people together to develop
a curriculum for Deaf education in Zimbabwe. And most of the week was spent working with
hearing people, developing this curriculum specifically. And then two days was spent
visiting with a preschool ‑‑ a Deaf preschool,
a Deaf club that had a program for Deaf people
in the community, and I just dove right in with both feet, and just was able to connect
with these people. They were my people. They were my friends. I was able to just, kind
of hang out with them and see what was going on in their lives and share this commonality
with them about being Deaf. With the hearing people it was a very official tour, you know,
they went off and did what they wanted to do and I was like, I'm staying with these
people, I'm connecting with these people on a kinship level. And when it was time to leave,
they talked about everything they had heard and everything they had learned about ‑‑
these were the hearing people, they talked about
everything they learned during that week and
I was like, I want to stay with the Deaf folks, my community here. And several times, you
know, they had ‑‑ the hearing people had to nudge me like, you know, the bus is
leaving, we got to go, got to get back to the
hotel, we got these workshops, these curriculums
we have to get going to, and every time I felt like oh, going back into isolation. It
was very emotional, painful time for me to be able to ‑‑ to have to disconnect from
the Deaf people that I met there. And the hearing people on the ‑‑ in this group
had no idea, it was an eye-opening experience
for them to see this instant connection between
me and the Deaf Zimbabweans.
And the one ‑‑ that touch of nature, that being Deaf, was the
one thing that led us to being kinship. And the hearing people
who were on the trip were able to make friends
with some of the hearing Zimbabweans but they
didn't have that deep, bone-deep connection that I had with the Deaf Zimbabweans, because
we were able to talk about our experience of being isolated or oppressed or misunderstood.
So it was just interesting, fascinating that I was able to benefit so much more from being
with the Deaf Zimbabweans than my hearing colleagues were able to benefit being with
the hearing Zimbabweans. So how do you notice this touch of nature? That's one example,
this touch of nature is being Deaf. But why don't you think about what the touches
of nature are in your life. Gender, or how you identify yourself in one way that gives
you take touch of nature that you're able to be kin with someone else, and take advantage
of that to build collaborations and partnerships.
What Deaf people tend to do is create temporary
Deaf spaces. Because there is no Deaf part of the community. There is no Deaf part of
town, you know, oh, you know we've got one part where there's a lot of people from
Puerto Rico who live here, there are a lot of people over here who are, you know, from
Chinatown, but we don't have the Deaf town. We're scattered all over in whatever community
we live in. And most of the Deaf people have parents who
are hearing, and most Deaf couples, when they expand their family and have children, the
children are hearing.
The only parallel to the experience of Deaf people as being a one-generational
experience are ‑‑ is the LGBT community. Because a lot of GLBT people have
parents who are straight, who don't identify as GLBT, or gay couples tend to adopt kids and the
kids don't necessarily grow up and identify as being gay.
There is ‑‑ again, there's no Deaf part of town, and there used to be things such
as Deaf clubs, Deaf churches where Deaf people would congregate as the community, but they
have really dwindled and gone by the wayside as
people have discovered other ways to connect,
like through texting or email or Facebook, or
that's really generational right now, creating
what Deaf space is. What is that Deaf identity,
and what that connection means, and it's really changing
with the technology that's out there right now. There's a lot more reliance on temporary
space. And Deaf camps, where children who come together
for one week in the summertime and they're all Deaf and they hang out and they have that
great camping experience and they have a very valuable week in their lives and the other
51 weeks of the year they don't have Deaf camp. But for one week, they are Deaf with
every other Deaf kid there is, they're all sharing that touch of nature, that kinship.
At a big ‑‑ when you have a big international Deaf convention, when the Deaf congregants
come to that convention center, that convention becomes the Deaf space, and as the end of
that convention nears, those people start to figure out, how can
we still connect, and how can we still have kinship, even as
we go back to our separate lives. So that's the temporary space. They create that space,
and they call it Deaf.
Another example of this, of temporary space, is at a gay nightclub
or a gay dance club. That's a temporary space, because it used
to be like in the '80s and '90s, you know, most clubs didn't have, you know, like they
didn't ‑‑ most gay clubs weren't able to continue and to make ends meet and to have
be gay 100% of the time. They might have every
Thursday night is gay night, but Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, is straight
night or mixed night. You know. Or Wednesday
is the gay night or Monday is lesbian night. And that became a temporary space. And it
was created and it was held by the people who came to that space. And it was very valued,
it was a very safe space for people to be able to mingle with like people. But the rest
of the week, that space was not safe. That one night was their space. It was worth it,
it was valuable. And during the day, maybe that space, that
gay club or whatever club it is was completely
empty, there was nothing on the walls, perhaps,
but at that night the lights were dimmed, the technopop was booming, the lights were
flashing and the people are out on the dance floor a sweaty mess, and that was ‑‑
became magic, it was magical. So the point is that a place or a space was
magical at that point and that 2:00 in the morning, when the bar closed and the lights
were raised, the magic was gone as you were looking out at these other people here, and
they would close the bar, you know, they all had that same experience, but when the lights
came on, it felt like, oh, it's kind of an ugly building,
there's really not anything on the walls here.
But while you were dancing, you know, wow, this is
great space, coolest place on earth, this is the
gay place. Oh, look at the lights coming up, oh,
I guess it's kind of dingy, it's kind of drab
walls. So that is a temporary space; during the
actual use of that space, it becomes magical.
It becomes identified and bonded in that one moment, and becomes a temporary space.
So Deaf people use temporary space, and gay people use temporary space as well. Religious
communities can also use temporary space. One example is the Hajj.
In Islam, one of the five foundations of the faith
is that people are expected, at least once in their
lifetime, to make the journey to Mecca, that is the goal, is to get there.
And there is a Ka'ba, K-A-B-A, there is a Ka'ba box
there, and, but the Hajj is a little bit different.
The Hajj is a temporary space. There are millions
of Muslims from around the world, different
cultures, different socio‑economic status, different languages, all dressed alike, all
doing the same procession, all having that experience, that movement of the Hajj.
Their multiple identities coalesce into one. They are Muslim.
And the worldwide Ummah means community, and it can be
seen and touched and felt and experienced right there.
And the rest of the year, diversity can be very overwhelming.
You know, maybe a Muslim lives
in Saudi Arabia, and how a Muslim lives in Saudi Arabia can be different how one lives
in another country, or how one lives in America.
But during the Hajj, when they make that procession
to Mecca, they have kinship. And that is the implementation of Islam, worldwide.
The Middle Age Christian community center is a temporary space. The cathedral is very
permanent and most of the time it's empty and a cathedral, but on Sundays the priest
would be speaking Latin in the Middle Ages, I don't know what they were talking about,
they're just, kind of, speaking Latin and I wouldn't be able to understand it, but then
the minute the bread was raised, everything would stop, and all eyes would be raised and
look at that bread that was being broken by the priest, and the cup that was being raised
by the priest. And that became a temporary space, regardless
of the diversity in the congregation, regardless
of whether anyone was able to understand any
one word that the priest spoke in Latin, that raising of the bread and cup bonded everyone
in a kinship. So thinking about Deaf temporary
spaces is quite a powerful idea. How identity
coalesces with temporary space. And maybe that's a possible solution for managing these
diverse identities. How do we define and design
temporary spaces? How do we make these connections?
Maybe the rest of the year we can't, or the rest of the week we can't. Maybe the community
has infighting or is fighting with another community. Is there some way to develop and
create a temporary space to bring these people together?
It might be a week, just one week long. And then
they go back to fighting for the 51 weeks of the
year. And then maybe another week, next year becomes two weeks, and then they begin to
understand each other and that temporary space has power, and meaning, and importance. And
one more example of temporary space is on the next slide here.
Do you recognize this? This is a temporary space. Most students don't realize it, most
don't realize it, even the faculty may not realize it, but every year students come and
go, they come and go, new admissions, graduations.
Maybe they stay for five or six or seven years
[laughter] ‑‑ but if it's an undergraduate, could be a six or seven‑year plan. But they
come and then they go. That's the point. So when I started at Gallaudet, I had a friend
of mine, he used to be my campus minister, and he said "good luck" when I first got there.
And the second thing he said was,
you're preaching to the parade. You stand in a place, and the
students in the community will parade by you.
Every four or five years there will be a completely
new group of people. You can never rest. You can never assume anything, and the parade
will keep moving. Just the procession will continue. And that
has proven to be true. I stayed at Gallaudet for five years, most of my freshman year,
and then I graduated and moved on.
The freshmen that I had been preaching to had moved on.
And that proved itself as a temporary space, that community was temporary. Everyone had
wonderful time together for the time that they were there,
and then they went back to where they came from.
Right now it's spring break, everyone's gone.
I stopped by my office before I came here to pick up
a few things, and the campus was completely empty.
Instead, there were groups of hearing high school students who were touring
during their spring break, coming to see what Gallaudet was like. Wanting to see what a
Deaf University was like. And it was the strangest thing in the world
to go into Gallaudet and see all of these hearing people, very bizarre. But it struck
me when I noticed that. Every year it happens in the summer, too. The students leave the
campus, and outside groups come in for summer training programs and various things. It's
interesting to sit there and watch that parade change.
So a University is a temporary space.
They already exist as that.
Now we're going to talk about Judith Butler from the University of California. Her idea
is that gender is something that is performed. Your body has a sex assigned to it. Might
be a male or a female or intersex. There is a wide range. You may opt for surgery to change
something during your lifetime, but sex is not necessarily fixed, it's fluid. Gender
is completely different. It might be related to sex, but if someone's sex is male or female
or intersexed,
their gender may be masculine, feminine, or something in between.
Transgender is what we call that. There is a wide range. Who they are in the morning
may be different from the gender that they're performing
in the afternoon. They might go back to work
with a suit and tie, they get home and change into a dress. How you perform your gender
is how you express yourself. That's a social construct. It depends on how you perform it.
So you're always on the stage.
That stage is where we perform all of our different identities.
I'm Deaf now, but it might be different from how I'm Deaf at Gallaudet, or how I'm Deaf
with my other Deaf friends. How I'm a man now or how I'm a man later in the day, how
I'm a man later when I'm at home watching basketball, these are all different identities
of being a man. We perform those identities. And we can continue
to recreate those. They're not fixed. They're not permanent identities. Identity itself
is a temporary space. It is a stage on which you stand and perform.
This stage on the slide is empty. It represents
an opportunity. So going back to the big stage,
Syracuse University. There might be disabled people discussing things, there might be the
Deaf community discussing things, religious
communities discussing things amongst themselves.
Secular atheist groups discussing things, LGBT communities, women's rights month.
We have discussions about women's history month, all these various issues that we face.
So do I go to the lecture with the Deaf guy tonight,
or with the women's history lecture? You know,
you have to decide. Thanks for coming, by the way. But these are decisions. [laughter]
How different identities pull us in different directions. How do they pull us in ways that
bring us to different groups? Those are created temporary spaces.
And you can take advantage of the temporary spaces that have already been created, such
as the ones that we've discussed that are here at SU. One community might not understand
another community, and there might be fighting, and that's when we need to figure out how
to design a temporary space, to bring those two together.
YFYC ‑‑ IFYC, the Interfaith Youth Core, got an award from last year for partnership
and goals for collaboration. Different religious
groups didn't understand each other, didn't
know how to receive each other, but when they got together, it served to help the community.
They could feed the homeless, have fundraisers together.
And not have to sit around and debate
what the religions say, and who's right and wrong, rather just get together and focus
on the work that needs to be done. And maybe talk about other things they have in common,
like classes that they're taking, as they're doing that service work.
And they can learn from each other in those spaces, in a much more natural way. That's
a temporary space in action. So designing a temporary space really just means creating
a collaboration between various groups.
It can be kind of risky and scary, but it's worth--a chance worth taking.
So I've been talking for a while, I'm going to turn it
over to the audience now, to have a discussion about how SU uses temporary spaces. Maybe
before you can answer that, where is‑‑where do we need to create a temporary space here
at SU? To come together on various things, where we can have ideas without tearing people
in half or in fourths or in eighths, we can allow that portfolio of identities, and create
a temporary space to honor the whole person. Where is the need for that here? That's my
first question to you. And second, how would that happen?
So I want you to have a discussion with each other about those two questions.
And thank you.
That's the end of my presentation.
Any questions? Comments? Ideas? I leave it up to you. I'm
yours for the rest of the time.
And if someone has a question, please walk up to the microphone,
there are a few microphones around the room. Also, we have interpreters if need be.
Very quiet...
Yes, we've got one brave soul.
>> Can you give an example of a permanent space?
>> That's a very good question. I think more permanent spaces are like social institutions.
For example, we can talk about the Methodist church.
That's my denomination, so I can criticize my own church. [laughter]
The Methodist church, as an institution, has
boundaries that are permanent. Historically, they value these. They have a value system
and a way of running things. Every several years we have a meeting, we get together to
discuss policies, et cetera. It's a general conference. Another name for that is complete
chaos. [laughter] Because there are 1,000 delegates representing
millions of Methodists from all around the world, trying to decide policies for the next four
years. So every four years we have the same fight, fighting about how to structure the
church, fighting if we should include gay and lesbian people or not, and fighting about
whether global churches are treated equally. It's the same arguments again and again. And
we have a voting process. The committee meets, the policy is discussed, it's proposed, and
then there's a decision. If you have 50% plus one vote, you win. That's a permanent space.
That is a fixed way of doing things. Very fixed.
All of the different interest groups are invested
in that system. That is a fixed system. It's
not a temporary space. We were just talking about
how to change that. We're having a general
conference instead of ‑‑ instead of maybe having rows of chairs, maybe having small
groups, sitting people at round tables rather
than in pews, for example. Like you're sitting
at the dinner table. Did it work? I don't--there's
no overnight change that's going to happen,
but at the last general conference, it was really fascinating. The committee restructured
the church, they didn't come up with a policy that they could all agree on, but they tried
to come up with one that they could. And finally,
it barely passed, the one that they did come up
with that was proposed, but when it came down to
it, it was against the Constitutional principles
so it was rejected. So there was business that couldn't be finished,
we were trying to change things, but we all had to leave. So does that mean that we failed?
Or that we succeeded? What does that mean? But it's a permanent process. We have a fixed
Congress and we come together and we have a process for this. We have a 50/50 vote.
We can have a discussion, what's the process, do we change the way that we make a decision?
What are we doing in churches? We use Robert's Rules of Order, it's very important to run
our meetings.
That's a permanent space. It could maybe become temporary, but I'm not
sure, I guess we will see what happens four years from now.
But a social institution really represents a fixed way ‑‑ a fixed pattern, it's
not necessarily a negative thing, that's a permanent space, though. Sometimes people
feel very intertwined with those things. But it can be an illusion. That's one thing that
I've learned from Buddhism over the years, is that everything is an illusion, everything
is temporary when it comes down to it. Even if there is a permanent institution, it's
still temporary, really. So when I think of something as permanent,
it means, it doesn't always mean that it's functioning in a permanent place, I think ‑‑
I would suggest temporary is more healthy than permanent. Temporary allows us to manage
diversity in a more healthy way, rather than trying to set up a permanent structure and
then follow it indefinitely. Temporary spaces allow for comfort, and allow
people to be comfortable with who they are. Any other comments or questions or ideas?
>> Hi. So I was wondering about the continuity issue. So if you have temporary spaces, lots
of people talk about liminal space, and interstitial
space, and the magic and promise that these
create, and I agree with you. And I really appreciate you being here and all the wonderful
things you shared with us, Kirk, thank you.
So if we want to have the magic of those liminal
or interstitial or temporary spaces, how do we do that but still have a kind of continuity
in the social justice work we want to do, since they're temporary?
>> Going back to that word kin, kinship. Kinship can be permanent. Maybe not permanent, but
it can have continuity. Kinship provides a relationship like a family. And a family is
whatever you define it as. But it's really a partnership, a relationship that continues.
And kinship can be passed on through the generations as well.
And the next generation will most likely accept that,
because there is that established kinship.
There might be changes, but relationships can change over time. But they still have
that connection as kin. So that touch of nature that was described in this quote is really
kinship. And without that, the magic goes away. It closes at 2:00 and the lights come
on, the bar closes, everybody goes home, everybody
is hung over the next day. That's not magical anymore.
But that place is still there. What you experienced
is still there. And how that affects your identity and your understanding of yourself
is still there. You might decide to volunteer. Maybe you're
an evangelical Christian and you want to do service work for homeless people. Maybe you're
a very strong Muslim and you end up volunteering
with that evangelical Christian. And after a while,
over that service work, you bond, you have discussions, and you realize that you're not
so different after all. When that opportunity, that volunteer opportunity
is gone, they go home, maybe they never speak to each other again, maybe they never meet
another evangelical Christian ever again, but they had that moment and they understand
what it means to be Christian or to be Muslim because they came together in that moment.
Not necessarily the idea, but the person, the kinship continues.
Anyone else? I'm having fun, I don't know about you.
>> I'm actually quite loud, so I don't need a microphone.
So I don't want to be that person,
but I just want to find some common ground.
>> Go for it, be that person.
>> Are you familiar with the term serial collectivity?
>> Yes.
>> Okay. So when you talk about kinship and these temporary spaces, obviously I can't
help but think about serial collectivity, and the idea that people actually come together
through collaboration, but because of some kind of relational object or idea or thing,
right? And I'm just curious if you could speak a
little bit to that--and feel free to reject that because I understand, I'm asking you
to speak to my interest, and that's kind of unfair, but I see serial collectivity in this,
but I'm wondering, do these temporary spaces allow for serial collectivity easily, or can
serial collectivity create temporary spaces? What's that relationship?
>> Hmm. That's a very interesting question. You got me thinking about that now. I'm cooking
up some ideas. The idea behind that is that people get together
at different times for different purposes. Before this lecture, we were over there eating
dinner in the other room, and the idea came up of having a coalition. Meaning that the
community, different communities, the concept of coalition is different from a concept of
a community. So serial collectivity points to having a coalition for a common goal, and
then dissolution when that goal is satisfied or realized. That can be a temporary space.
If serial collectivity is more ‑‑ more of an organic relationship, then it means
you share a natural interest. You're different
than me, but we both like to watch basketball.
That's organic. You don't have a common goal that you're trying to satisfy, you just want
to watch basketball together.
Or maybe the Super Bowl, you know, maybe people
get together to watch the Super Bowl every year. Are they watching the game, or are they
eating food? Are they there for the football game, or are they there to enjoy each other's
company? They come together for a goal, to watch the
game, but they have a relationship goal too. So there are various levels involved with
that. It's kind of like a chicken and the egg scenario with temporary spaces.
Serial collectivity develops from having a goal, or having a coalition. It's not to develop
a community. It may happen, on the way, that a temporary space might result from that,
but they have a reason for coming together that is more of a kinship. It might already
be a temporary space. It might have been a temporary space before that because they already
created a reason to come together. Like the football party. Everyone gets together, and
it's not a real reason why they're coming together, it's just a nice, easy excuse to
have a party. People go to football parties for the Super Bowl, most don't watch the game.
Most of them don't even like football. It's an excuse to have a party, really. Why not?
That's a temporary space. And that's related to serial collectivity. So, I'm not
sure if it can be divided by having a leader or not, but having a coalition is different
from having a community. The community has opportunities for temporary
space, the coalition can lead to a temporary
space, but it's not automatic. Does that answer
your question? Get you thinking? Does it help?
>> Yeah, yeah, I guess a clarifying question I would ask would be, so I see the benefits
politically of serial collectivity. I feel like in my own *** life, I understand the
benefits of kinship or community, but what are
the political benefits of kinship or community?
>> Hmm. There are lots of political benefits with serial collectivity because the goal
is to have a goal to achieve something, and then disband when that's realized. But the
goal of a community is to socialize, to get together, to do things ‑‑ and I just
lost my train of thought. I had a really great comment, and I lost it, just one second.
>> Happens all the time.
>> Like the HUC and the NGTF, the National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force, one is a single‑issue
group that just supports gay and lesbian rights. HRC. That's all ‑‑ that's their whole
agenda, they have very clear policies and very clear goals.
And that's a coalition agreement
to work together to a common goal. When that goal is satisfied, or if they fail, that group
will dissolve.
The NGLTF, they want to approach many different
issues. Social and economic justice. Their business becomes each other's business, too.
They're interested in equality issues, and they have many issues in common.
They're looking more towards a permanent kinship, the result may
be more of a community or maybe not, depending
on how they go forward. But you see this popping up in church movements too; the Methodist
Church group is reconciling the ministry's network in including LGBT people. That's one
goal. There is another group called the inclusive
church ‑‑ church within a church movement.
Saying, we don't need to ask permission from the church to run church as we need to. Means
that they can be inclusive, not marginalizing people, and they're fighting for that amongst
all their various issues. There might be the same people involved in
both groups, but their goals are--whether it's a single issue or many convoluted--numerous
issues within the church. One just wants to change the church's inclusive policy, and the
other one is ‑‑ the one that wants to change the church's policy has a definite
outcome. It's a dream, of course, but they want the Methodist church to become inclusive.
And they won't need to be together anymore when that happens.
And the other group is more interested with the relationships amongst one another within
the church. There is more of a political benefit
with the first one, both have political benefits,
but the second one is more of a healthy approach to a holistic person.
As a ‑‑ so Black gay Methodists have come up to me and they are concerned about
this reconciling ministry, they're concerned that perhaps this ministry is not looking
at all their different identities as a Black, gay Methodist.
Whereas the other group, church
within a group, is looking at everything, is
looking at gender inequality, racial inequality,
social inequality, and looking at all those issues. The first group, the reconciling group,
is a single issue piece.
There is now a new group called the Black Ministry Church for Renewal, and they're a
group of Black Methodist churches. So people who are Black and gay and Methodist don't
know which group they should be supporting, because different groups are fighting for
one different part of their identity. Whereas the church within a church group is looking
at the whole identity, the whole portfolio of who they are as a Black, gay Methodist.
So they are working towards a common goal. And that group, the church within a church,
does not have a clear ending. Whereas the other two I've mentioned, they have a clear
end point, and it's nice, it might be successful and it would make change and it would make
needed change, but the church within a church is offering more, it's offering ‑‑ it's
transcending that. It's offering something beyond just a one‑issue resolution, because
it's looking at the whole identity portfolio and it's looking at the person's whole life.
I see Tiffany making notes at the back of the room here. [laughter]
>> Thank you for your presentation. My question is, can you build a kinship community based
upon virtues, values, and commitment, as opposed to, or in solidarity with, the portfolio of
identity?
>> That's a very important question. I'm working with two philosophers and actually looking
at teaching ethics right now, so where virtue is defined and how it's defined, where it
comes from, and a lot of ideas about virtue and the origin of it, and that is shaped by
community's experience and generational experience.
Virtues might be from a temporary place or
an identity; a virtue can also be something that's performed by being good, you know,
being good is a virtue. Being a good person and then you perform goodness and then you
become a good person. So that can be an identifier as well.
Trust is a virtue. If you trust someone, that's a virtue. But I don't know in this audience
who I can trust, except for a couple people that I know. I believe I can trust them, but they
have performed that they are trustworthy, and so they are trustworthy person. Virtue
comes from how you perform something. So that has a parallel to how we talk about identity,
this identity portfolio. How you perform your identities, and how you show who you are,
and virtue and identities, do have a connection.
That connection can be broken by a vice, for example,
perhaps someone performs falsely who they are, that's a vice, or maybe they
present one way but they act in a different way. So they are two‑faced, as it were.
And that can be a vice as well. So thinking about virtues, they can build community and
they can build commonality and those ‑‑ the virtues in the community are coming from
the same place. So virtues and identity are not that separate. I think in some ways, we
should flip the whole conversation about identity,
and talk about virtues. What virtues and values
do we hold in common, and what of my virtues and values are different than yours, and can
we create temporary spaces where our virtues and values can combine? And where we can have
a dialogue with each other? So it's the same process that we've been speaking
about with temporary spaces and with identity.
I'm going to go back to the SU slide and have
that just up here as a ‑‑ I like the picture there, it's a really nice picture.
Any more? Yeah?
>> You were talking about the transition between
identity when you were saying, perhaps an undergraduate
has an identity then, and then when they're going to become a graduate student, that then they
have a different identity. For myself, I'm hard of hearing, and throughout undergraduate
school I just struggled as a hearing person because I don't really do sign language. I
kind of read lips, I prefer to read, but I didn't go to a school where that was really
understood. So my identity became one of, I guess, sort of, struggle and trying to adapt
to the environment, and sort of fool people into thinking that I could hear much better
or that I was a hearing person. And that--also, I don't go to school here, I work, I have
a job and that's another space in which I sort of have to adapt to everyone else. But
now I have the opportunity where I have been accepted to graduate school and I might be
able to transition into an environment where I will be able to, perhaps, have a different
identity, which is more truthful to myself as a hard of hearing person, where I will have
the assistive technology available. So what would you say to somebody that is
making the transition from one identity to another, when for so long it's just been that
identity of not a really true Deaf person, but then trying to become that because it
just feels more comfortable, and then sort of having to be an academic in that way also.
>> I can speak. It speaks. I grew up hard of hearing. I did not use sign
language. Both my father was hard of hearing and doesn't sign. He's also in denial but,
yeah, he uses hearing aids. But you ask my mom, they dated all the way through high school
and then they got married, traditional story. If you ask my mom, he was losing his hearing
in high school. If you ask my dad, it was after high school. I tend to believe Mom on
that. So yeah, I grew up with that. I did not know sign language until I really
came into my undergraduate years, and I began that transition. The first thing I have to
say, is you can do it. The second thing I have to say, is it won't be easy. So let me
transition back for a second.
I can sign. I work at Gallaudet University
and I sign with everyone on campus. I leave my
hearing aids at home because I can. I have ‑‑
Deaf people around me, I have interpreters around me, I perform in my identity as a Deaf
person. But I can also perform as a hearing person or as a hard of hearing person, and
all of those identities are in my portfolio. And I developed the skill to be able to do that.
I developed the relationship to be able to encourage those identities.
So at home, I speak with my parents and I become a hearing person. When I come back to work
after break, I'm a Deaf person again. It's very odd. And then my housemates are all hearing,
so I speak with them. I go to work and I use my sign language. So somewhere on the train
from my house to campus in Washington, D.C., somewhere in that train, magically, I become
a Deaf person or back to a hearing person on the way home. I don't know how that happens,
but in my commute that's how it happens, and I transition between the two. So I can see
two visions here, the Deaf world and the hearing
world, becoming a bridge. These are different
images that have been used, the Deaf ‑‑ you know, Deaf world and hearing world, there
being a bridge between there. I don't really
like that idea about walking on a bridge between
one or the other, but I also see myself as a frog. I grew up in the water. I was a tadpole
in the water with my little tadpole tail, then I grew my little legs and then I hopped up onto land
and then I could breathe, but I still could get into the water again if I would like to.
I can sit on a log or on a lily pad, you know, with the water up to my eyes if I want, or
up to my mouth. And when I close my eyes like now ‑‑ sorry, I have two different eyelids,
and when I close one set of eyelids, I can look underwater, and then the other one is
still clear and I can see up to the sky. So I'm a frog. Frogs are not always pretty. Most
people look at frogs and think, eh, they don't think, "oh my gosh, look at that adorable
little frog!" You know, like a puppy dog or a kitty cat. I mean, most people, anyway.
There are some frog people out there. But most people, you know, they don't say oh,
look at the cute, cute frog, you know.
Well, maybe you could find someone like that, but I'm a frog.
Also, the frog population in the world is
decreasing scientifically. Science are ‑‑ scientists are very concerned about the number
of frogs in the world, globally, with all of the climate changes, how the earth is starting
to raise its temperature, etc. There's less and less water, and frogs are-- many species
of frogs are disappearing, and they are becoming endangered.
So that's a biodiversity issue,
because the world is dying. And the world needs frogs, both the green, hoppy, hoppy
frogs but also people like me, and like you, who are frogs who can transition, sit on the
lily pad of the world and be able to look into the water, but also look up into the land.
But how to make that transition is something you have to develop for yourself. And for
me it was the transition from undergrad to grad school, that's when I started working
with interpreters full time. I started developing
my sign language skills in my undergrad years
and thought that as soon as I got to grad school I was ‑‑ I had the fluency, enough
of the fluency to be able to work with interpreters.
And I didn't understand everything at first,
but I was able to pick things up as I went along. And what I did was, I looked for the
Deaf community, wherever I could find Deaf people, I just jumped right in. And it was very
awkward, yes, I will admit that, because people were signing very quickly and I wasn't able
to understand everything they were saying, you know, I didn't know if they were talking
to me or someone behind me, but anyway, I was able to pick up the facility of the language.
And I realized that growing up all my life, I had been angry and I didn't know it. I grew
up angry and I didn't know why. And something was missing. And I just couldn't name it.
I didn't know what it was. And then when I found the Deaf world, when I transitioned,
that's when I realized I found this kinship. I found this missing piece. That's what had
been missing all along.
When the audiologist told me when I was five--kind
of patted me on the head, and said, "Kirk, there's something wrong with you, you need
hearing aids," I will never remember that, that is burned on my brain, that memory, I
was five, to be five and to be told something
wrong with you and that you need to have hearing
tests over and over again, whether you pass or
fail, or get it right, and I was not passing,
I knew I wasn't passing, even at five I could feel that, I could feel that dread, and to
be told, "there's something wrong with you." Instead of someone coming to me at five and
saying, "there's nothing wrong with you, you're
Deaf," that would have been a Deaf gain moment,
as opposed to the hearing loss moment I had then and growing up, I was very angry because
I thought, my family, the audiologist, everyone is wrong about me, how they describe me is
not who I am. As soon as I was able to have that language and I had access to the language
of sign language, I was able to fulfill who I am as a Deaf person. And it didn't happen
overnight. I had to keep looking for that Deaf world, and making those connections with
the Deaf world, and it didn't happen. And there are many nights when I cried, and of
course there are many nights when I came home laughing. So good luck to you. Thank you.
All right, do we need to stop now? Okay. Or did you have a question to ask me?
>>No, I'm just...
>>Tiffany has given me "the look."
>>Yes, after years of doing ritual together, we know when we need to hook it up.
I am just so very thankful that we could have Kirk with us here at Syracuse University.
And I have to say, not many times can you say you are grateful for natural disasters,
I am so thankful for Hurricane Sandy, because it meant that Kirk got to visit our campus
twice. And he was here in the fall, he preached at the Protestant Campus Ministry, and then
he gets to be here today. He's going to actually be here today and tomorrow,
and he's leaving on Friday. And so there is a lot of time for conversation. Tomorrow we'll
be hosting a lunch here. Radell who has left, but you can get in touch with her, you can get
in touch with me. There are still some spaces
left at that lunch if you would like to continue
the conversation. We create temporary spaces all the time, and
tonight was one of those temporary magical spaces. And so thank you, Kirk, for creating that
and providing that for us. Can we offer Kirk our appreciation?
[Applause]
>> Thank you. One more thing, very, very key--there
are some cupcakes left over there on the table.
Help yourself!
[laughter]
Thank you.