Perforating tympanic walls: A second look at identity politics in relation to the 1988 and 2006 protests at Gallaudet University

This dissertation explores the historical developments and progressions that led up to the uprisings at Gallaudet University. The uprisings, the 1988 Deaf President Now and the 2006 Unity for Gallaudet (also known as Better President Now) protests, were not accidental nor were they even isolated from the overall history of deaf education, educational and advancement opportunities for people who are deaf, access to languages (English and American Sign Language), recognition and validation for the Deaf Community and its culture and language as opposed to deafness as pathological, and the structure of the university that affirmed or denied those histories. In other words, the architecture (in more senses than simply blueprints of buildings) of the curriculum, policies, faculty, staff, and student body, has been informed by and has informed the larger discourses about deafness, deaf education, and policy-making process. The uprisings aimed to challenge those discourses with the goal of achieving humanity for people who are deaf, educated, and skilled, and with the goal of overthrowing the structure and its mechanism for (re)producing the discourses. Chapter 1, "Introducing the Perforator," introduces and explains the dissertation, its aims, and its underlying theory. With Michel Foucault's "The Subject and Power" essay as lens, chapter 2, "Policing and Hooping Deaf Bodies: Controlling and containing all things quintessentially deaf," explores the dynamics of power relations between all stakeholders, including the administration, students, faculty, staff, and the architecture of the university, and how they feed or take away from the relations, a sort of a confluence of the web, and how it has come to the relations as they are set up. With Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth as lens, chapter 3, "Historicizing the Rage," explores the dynamics of the history of Deaf Education and its effects on the articulation of structuring the institution. It also explores the resistance to such structuring -- in which the rage stemmed in during the protests. The rage is a way, a means, of, to borrow Homi K Bhabha's term, (re)enunciating the future writings of the deaf history that would be defined in more a positive, celebratory tone. With Jacque Derrida's "Plato's Pharmakon" as lens, chapter 4, "Text & Textuality of Jordan & Fernandes," explores the highly fluid representation of I. King Jordan, the first Deaf president of the university and of Jane K. Fernandes, the succeeding president-designate. They had come to mean different things for different groups of people. The activists, however, had perceived them as a part of the larger system that had to be destroyed in order to create a new system. Despite the attempts Fernandes made to pave way for a new system, her textuality (meaning in terms of representation) was so overpowering that the attempts and promises went with the wind. With Foucault's "Truth and Power" essay as lens, chapter 5, "What Truth? A Look at the (dis)continuity in discourse and knowledge," explores the language of the Mission Statement, Statement of Communication, and the undergraduate general education requirements, and how they become a web of discourse informed and informing the philosophy and practice of deaf education, which in turn informs the development of deaf history. With Minh-ha Trinh's "Not You/Like You: Postcolonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference" as lens, chapter 6, "I am. I am not. I am. I am not: The plucking of the Ox-Eye Daisy of I/i," explores the complicated politics of self-identification and identity at the university and in the deaf communities. This is to continue the discussion of the Unity for Gallaudet protest regarding what inclusiveness means. Does it mean, like Fernandes had suggested, making Gallaudet for everyone, oral deaf, hard of hearing, Deaf of Deaf family; and, as a result, the institution should reflect the confluence of those mixed identities, and honoring all ways of being deaf and communication styles (ASL is one of many styles, not the target language of the institution; English is). The Unity for Gallaudet protest, on the other hand, shares Fernandes's definition to a point: ASL must be the center of the institution, the umbrella under where everyone comes under with the aim to become fluent in the same way everyone aims to become fluent in English. Deaf Culture also must be the center, where visibility is crucial to academic life.