phenomenology: March 2008 Archives

A vigorous debate between two faculty members dominated conversation about Marc Crépon's "What We Demand of Languages," an extended footnote to Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other.

I had been worried about arriving late to the Center for Communication Studies event, however Briankle Chang and Vernon Cronen were deep in discourse, ranging from the mistake of theology (not a feature of all religions), the influence of the Platonic opening, Aquinas' linkage of physics with the New Testament, to structuralism as the antidote to transcendentalism, and whether "topos" is a place that contains all topoi and all vocabularies or a place that can be talked about in infinitely many ways.

I always learn more from faculty interactions with each other than from monologistic pedagogy!

A colleague translated Crépon's article from French. Srinivas Lankala explains:

"Crépon summarizes Derrida’s argument, provides references to the argument that Derrida did not provide, and extends the argument to new areas:

• the question between what language is and what language means in terms of politics of nationalism or politics of identity
• the definition of identity
• the definition of the self

"One important thing called into question is the notion of a singular cultural identity: identity is formed in advance by language – the whole question of identity which cultural studies depends on, what post-colonial studies depends on, is nonexistent in that sense, it does not exist before language. Crépon extends Derrida’s proposition that the monolingualism of the other is not just his unique case of (to put it too simply) a French-speaking Jew in Algeria who is speaking French as the language of colonizer, this is one kind. Derrida goes beyond the particular to show that the idea of monolingualism is not simplistic. Crépon builds on the understanding that the colonized has no other language than that of the colonizer, but that all cultures are always colonized, because a culture comes into being through the question of naming, giving names, which is a function of language and calls language into being."

Naming sets Chang and Cronen off again (providing me descriptive data for "saying something," according to Chang). [Note: the provided link is not particular to the discussion, it merely invokes the complexity.]

It was suggested that "The point behind this extension of monolingualism is so that it is not understood as the empirical problem cultural studies tries to make it but rather a broader problem that applies to all of us: we all only ever speak one language and we never speak only that language." I am not familiar enough with cultural studies to know the (attempted?) formulation of this "empirical problem" - and I certainly won't speculate (although I am curious!)

Meanwhile, Lankala continues:

"What Crépon is doing to extend Derrida’s notion is to explore: how do we go beyond this situation, what do we do to go beyond this restrictive monolinuguaism that we all share? Derrida suggests the way beyond is to invent one’s language as one is speaking it. This is something Derrida associates with translation as a radical way to call language into question, to call identitiy into question. Not in the simple sense of from one source language to another, but a translation without sources, which only has a target language, which only has arrival; in its arrival it creates its own sources. This radical idea is what Crépon extends. How to invent new language to go beyond the monolingualism of the other that is a common situation for all."

The subsequent exchange between Cronen and Chang was much too quick to transcribe adequately, here are the main points that I think I can parse from the words I managed to capture.

Cronen questions the privileging of the speaker, the one who speaks, i.e., the one who names over "the responsiveness of the other." His argument is that there is no stability of language - any language - without a correspondence of action/response between the speech of one and the responsiveness of another. Cronen goes so far as to say that "the emphasis on naming is fundamentally misplaced" and poses "joint action" instead.

"Where," Chang asks, "does that joint come from" Joint, you already presuppose jointed, being joined. That is la langue, the package." Cronen illustrates by describing how a child learns language only through interaction. Chang concedes "two facts: we all have a father and a mother, and we speak," agree also with Cronen's emphasis on vision. Later, Cronen will characterize this vigorous exchange between them as a horror to those with a strict or narrow conception of dialogue, and Chang will call it "quotidian. We do this every day."

Hmmm. Yes. I am getting ready to "say something" (but certainly not everything! and guaranteed not yet well enough) by building on the use I made of their exchange to illustrate a distinction between representation and symbolism. After some more discussion on Derrida's emphasis on language, Lankala asserts, "The whole question of naming comes up because he’s talking of language as the force which calls culture into being, and culture is nothing but this whole process of naming."

• Lankala: Leaving Derrida’s book aside, how can one disagree that culture is nothing but naming? Culture means singular. The point exists because someone is naming someone else…. It exists because it is named as a culture….. [this is] "naming" properly understood; it is not making things ostensive.


• Cronen: Then what is [language]?


• Chang: [Language] allows us to call things out from their natural state, again. Not fixing a lexicon, it is about establishing presence.


• Cronen: [The] complexitiy [is] in the interactive process.


• Chang: No. Naming – we found the point of disagreement. Interaction makes no sense without naming having already taken place.

It is this "point of disagreement" that I will take up, eventually. First, here is the rest of my re-construction of the conversation. Lankala moves to another interesting question:

"the relationship that Crépon makes between language and how language is appropriated in movements seeking nationalism or defining identity. [Crépon uses a] completely opposite definition of what language should mean from the way language is generally used in more mainstream cultural studies tradition, [which is] as the language of the colonizer or language of the oppressed without calling into question or breaking apart what language actually is, what its function is in defining that movement or culture, where is it from. [Derrida and Crépon’s] move goes one step beyond the relationship between language-culture to discuss the functional role of language in creating a culture….."

What ensues is a discussion of how forced multilingualism can lead to monolingualism (e.g., the case of India), and problems of language being misconceived as a possession - the "mother tongue," as if language exists outside of/beyond the "me," which returns us to the beginning assumptions of appropriation (for identity construction: of "self", "culture," "nation," etc.)

• Cronen adds that promise is "linked to the notion that meaning is not just a presence but a pointing-into the future" (drawing on William James).
• Chang: A promise never promises anything, nothing but another promise. This is why it is linked to time, the future; that’s why they smuggle in Kant (law) and Kafka, how can they assemble these ideas together?!
• Cronen: Dewey [also, with his notion of] ends in view, not fixed. Using my vocabulary, [there is] always a punctuality, not a destination, [there is] always opening up, even when we think we’ve fulfilled ... still [there] opens up a new horizon of possibility
• Chang: If fulfilled, [a promise] is not a promise any more, it is not promising.

Finally the giants (!) relented enough (!) to let us peons into the fray. :-)

I mentioned the ideas I'm working on regarding interpretation as a way to keep promising, to keep language and meaning in motion. George asked about the use of the term, "political." Ellen brought in the notion of "power."

The entire 90 minutes rocked!

I am reading Monolingualism of the Other in preparation for a talk with Chang and Lankala this Wednesday.

Derrida risks two propositions:

1. We only ever speak one language.
2. We never speak only one language.

Obama balances on a tightwire in which he affirms everyone's basic humanity. I would hate to be judged solely on the basis of selected excerpts in other people's talk! His analysis is incisive: some people would prefer to perpetuate the myth that all whites are inherently racist, instead of promoting a politics that acknowledges growth and change as real. We are not limited by history, even if we foolishly choose to repeat it. The possibility of choice exists. A different future, diverging from the trajectories set so deeply in motion, is within reach. Such a future will not be secured by one vote, or even by one election. The pull of the familiar will persist, the risks of uncertainty continue to challenge. How deeply do we desire a new framework for our country and the world? We can set a new path, and not only this: we can follow through to the promise of absorbing pain and establishing new, healthier, and happier social and economic relations.

Israel and Palestine may be the world's best example. News media repeats the fiction of "the Palestinians" as if Hamas and Fatah represent something in common. Hamas follows the breach of the Gaza Strip wall with Egypt with increased suicide bombings in Israel, and Israelis initiate attacks on Palestinian neighborhoods that are disturbingly like pogroms.

What happened to the peacemakers?

Where are those who know how to do dialogue?

Meanwhile, Navy Carrier Squadrons philosophize: "Move Along" -

and George W. Bush plays cheerleader:

Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”

I'm closer to Brian Butterworth than Stanislas Dehaene, as this comparative review describes:

"Butterworth is a neuropsychologist who came to studying mathematical ability via his work on natural languages....Dehaene, on the other hand, started off as a mathematician, but became fascinated by the abstractness of his subject. He began to wonder where mathematical ability came from, and why some people are so bad at it, and others so good."

The Mathematical Brain appeals to me from the start, with the author's writing style being compared with Oliver Sacks (Seeing Voices: A Journey into the Land of the Deaf). The Number Sense reminds me of Barry Mazur's, Imagining Numbers (which I started and now want to finish).

The reviewer argues, "cognitive science tells us that it is possible to teach mathematics in a way that fits with our psyche, a way that minimises maths-induced fear and boredom." Lots of "sideways" exposure is doing it for me....all that three-dimensional American Sign Language interpreting has (seriously!) re-wired my conceptual circuits for math.

Just last week, the New Yorker's "Numbers Guy" wrote about whether our brains are actually wired for math, featuring Stanislas Dehaene.

One tidbit: in addition to a certain kind of math perception, the language you use also influences cogniive processing:

English is cumbersome. There are special words for the numbers from 11 to 19, and for the decades from 20 to 90. This makes counting a challenge for English-speaking children, who are prone to such errors as “twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven.” French is just as bad, with vestigial base-twenty monstrosities, like quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (“four twenty ten nine”) for 99. Chinese, by contrast, is simplicity itself; its number syntax perfectly mirrors the base-ten form of Arabic numerals, with a minimum of terms. Consequently, the average Chinese four-year-old can count up to forty, whereas American children of the same age struggle to get to fifteen. And the advantages extend to adults. Because Chinese number words are so brief—they take less than a quarter of a second to say, on average, compared with a third of a second for English—the average Chinese speaker has a memory span of nine digits, versus seven digits for English speakers.

"Pi, more commonly known by the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet, is the most widely-known mathematical constant in the world."

"While there are many infinitely long numbers in maths, pi is the only one in which an infinitely simple idea - the circle - unfolds into an infinitely complex value."

"For 3,500 years, humankind has attempted to solve the puzzle of pi, also called "squaring the circle", calculating the exact ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. However, no matter how hard anyone tries, they find only a new approximation."

"...pi beckons us on further. Some mathematicians believe that if we could only find some pattern in pi, even some hint that there were more fours than sevens, it could lead to a huge breakthrough in our understanding of the universe."

"The late physicist Carl Sagan, in his novel Contact, imagined a time when Earth scientists were sufficiently able to unravel enough of pi to find encoded messages from our creators-messages that would allow our primitive race to leap into a greater universal awareness. After all, if you were going to hide a long numeric message in the very fabric of our reality, pi would be a natural place to do it."

UMass will host an extraordinary event in early April: Landscapes of Violence. I approach it with two trajectories, one from the Dialogue under Occupation conferences (DUO 1 in Chicago, 2006; DUO 2 in the West Bank, 2007). The "dialogue" of the DUO conferences is still
"young" (as in, "new" for us in conversation with each other), but I remain hopeful that we academics and activists will be the ones to learn to talk soldiers and politicians toward other tactics. If not us, who?

I am not sure if this event in December, "States of Exception, Surveillance and Population Management: The Case of Israel/Palestine," is directly related to - or an outgrowth of - the work of DUO II participants, but the content certainly overlaps. Perhaps there is a dialogic trajectory we can build?

In considering the upcoming UMass conference, am also considering the students in the Group Dynamics course I'm teaching. Several of them mentioned concerns with a recent string of threats on campus (three messages, found in three different locations on different days, with similar content). Of course many in the campus community were affected by the shootings at Virginia Tech ... this instances are not comparable to the systemic and horrible repetitions of violence being played out among Palestinians and Israelis (or, arguably, among Colombians - with/against FARC and/or the paramilitaries and between Colombia and Venezuela) - but these are the touchpoints of violence in the lives of young U.S. Americans with which we must work.

Writing and Violence, April 20, 2007
We are Virginia Tech, April 21, 2007
"a matter of language", April 26, 2007

The first-year students' College Writing CourseWiki has a record of student reactions to a bomb scare last fall. These were captured serendipitously as a coincidence of the day's assignment with the threat of violence.

At least one student in this semester's Group Dynamics course is vocal about hating politics (i.e., "I hate politics"), and seems intent (evidence of argumentative rhetoric?) to make sure (evidence of nonverbal behaviors?) that the product designed by this semester's course doesn't "go" in that direction...I am sure he is not the only one who feels this, even if he is the most forthcoming about it. What a tension to resolve, isn't it? The world we live in is brutal, even if - here at mostly-cushy UMass - we are protected and insulated from having the day-to-day violence in our faces . . .

I'm excused from interpreting this talk, Nanometers, Femtoseconds, and Yoctomoles: Molecular-Dynamics Simulations of Diffusion in Garnet, which means I can take notes and play!

The professor is highly billed: Dr. Bill Carlson from UT at Austin. You think I'm kidding about "play"? No way, Jose!
Scale: plates, rocks in the field, mineral grains, atoms....
Geologic Time:
Sizes from macro to nano.....

Diffusion gives direct qualitative information on rates and duration of metamorphic processes. Garnet is present in a wide range of bulk compositions, is stable, and has a wide array of diffusive behaviors that can be monitored to help us understand rates of diffusion and the mechanisms behind them. You know my parallel? Groups (of people) and knowledge/understanding (disseminated via language).

Main topic: Molecular dynamics simulations.... (microdynamic intergroup relations?)

Problem: existing theories for diffusion at atomic scale don't explain the phenomena we observe...(sounds like social science to me!)

Novel systematics emerge from recent synthesis...

Elastic Strain Theory (EST) - diffusion by vacancy mechanism: work is required to move atoms apart and squeeze this atom in-between them....larger atom = more strain which slows down diffusion. Like all theory (!) "sometimes it works...sometimes it doesn't."

There's a "misfit parameter" (!) = "how badly an atom fits in its new site." If a good fit, then the number is small; if the atom is too big you get a positive misfit parameter, if the atom is too small you get a negative misfit parameter. (No speculation, thanks, on the size or charge of my misfits!)

Observation: a fundamental gap in our knowledge, sometimes smaller sizes diffuse more slowly (instead of faster, which is what theory predicts).

How else can observable systematics be explained if EST doesn't do it? Perhaps - molecular dynamics (MD) ...EST relies on a visualization based on Hooke's Law ;MD takes into account all of the binary potential fields (imagine: all 756 (?) potential dyads we calculated as the total combination of interpersonal pairings (28 individuals, each with 27 unique relationships - except I don't know how to do this math!) in the current course on Group Dynamics).

Comparison of Potential Barriers for Atoms of Different Size: take potential energy, over time, and compare it to optimal diffusion (and yield (?) energy barriers to diffusion). EST predicts well for larger atoms.....for smaller atoms....start with lower energy well because more tightly bound....then a smaller atom has a larger energy barrier to cross than the optimum size....

MD: Newtonian mechanics at the atomic scale.... with forces as sum of pairwise interactions: interatomic potential, interatomic distance.

Interaction potentials:

1. ionic charges (same = repel; different = attract)


2. Born-Mayer repulsion - atoms can't get too close to each other, will begin to push each other away = gives an indication of how hard the atom is (large value = billiard ball, small value = nerf ball)


3. dipole attraction (van der Waal) - an induced dipole, if the force is strong it leads to a large value, if the force is small then it leads to small value.

You have to select time steps that are a function of atomic motion...durations long enough to obtain many diffusive jumps... (time...always time! not to mention timing!)

Assign initial positions ("groups" never simply "begin" they are a convergence in time of dynamics already in motion, already historical), throw in random velocity (intensity/emphasis of attention to the storming phase of group development?)....

Diffusive Jump - Dr. Carlson shows an animation of atoms in motion.....cute!!! I wanna link to it! Could we model interpersonal relations in some kind of analogue? I've envisioned forever - do we have the technology?

Einstein relates diffusivity to time using a mean-square displacement.....average over all atoms, average over all possible times....get tau....then see how it changes, the slope is the diffusion quotient...

Vacancy concentrations are crucial - but how do we figure this out? One method comes up with a physically impossible result (100% vacancy) which indicates some of the physics is still being missed in the calculations. The standard MD simulations.... tend to significantly underestimate.... (something crucial. Kinda like social science, language, social construction of reality, you know what I mean).

Tracer diffusion simulations: replace 10% of the atoms with some other elements and examine the rate of diffusion of that element. (Can I just say, as if anything only ever goes in one way?!!!!!?)

Failure to generate (via simulation) the relationships that match measured behavior in strain relationships but the gaps/discrepancies point us to what we're missing... STATIC properties all MATCH up But the DYNAMICS do not!!! (Same as with social science?!)
Failing to account for what's happening to atoms when there are other atoms in the vicinity. Different cases pending varying polarizability. (I swear this is group relations jargon!)

This semester I've had the opportunity to work at the extremes: one professor who has seamlessly blended me into her extensive use of the chalkboard, and another whose gaze apparently registers only empty space whenever she accidentally happens to glance my direction. The contrast heightens my belief that attempts to make ourselves "invisible" (while interpreting) are worse than "professional": they are downright counterproductive.

For instance, the day I knew I could not possibly reconstruct the meaning for something uttered very quickly yet of obvious conceptual importance for the subject matter, and had to ask professor #2 (the one for whom language accommodation is nonexistent) for a repetition or clarification (I forget which), an expression crossed her face as if a voice had come from the woodwork. Her answer was curt (to say the least). However, I had established my presence (albeit momentarily). An interesting consequence of actually "being there" was that a non-deaf student requested my attention to a sight-line that I thought I was not blocking but, in fact, was. This had been going on for some time; the students had suffered simply because the non-verbal behavior of the professor indicated that I was to be ignored. I am always annoyed by teachers who assume that they have no responsibility for accommodating a bilingual situation - as if the interpreter wields some special magic that automatically transforms the laws of physics such that what you say is signed by me in fully comprehensible fashion before you're even done saying it, so that you can pick up and go on without pause, without any need to confirm meaningful understanding!

It is this matter of time that seems to drive much of the refusal to recognize the presence, and unavoidable effect, of having a language interpreter involved in the interaction. Not that everyone does this!

But here's the rub:

the time we experience bears little relation to time as read on a clock. The brain creates its own time, and it is this inner time, not clock time, that guides our actions.

This dilemma with time came sharply into focus for me while interpreting some one act plays. Occasionally a dialogue would be paced in such a way by the verbal turn-taking between the actors that the interpreters could replicate it in its entirety, building in the proper visual cues, creating pauses - fully mimicking the action instead of being in a constant rush to catch up to it. Yes, it may have been obvious that the interpreters were a turn "behind" the actors in the dialogue, but I can imagine that this would not appear so except at the beginning and end of the scene... if you were bilingual you could follow the auditory-and-visual languages in the echo or prelude, if not, you could focus exclusively on the accessible language and tune is as you wish to the additional layer of communicative spectrum. A sophisticated troupe could craft storylines that complement and replicate each other in ASL and English - neither audience would miss out nor find the process of interpretation distracting because the languages would be part of the weft and weave of the action.

It may sound abstract, but I'm closer to an articulation of such a bi-linguistic merger than I've ever been because of the experience working with professor #1 this semester. She was as surprised as most teachers are when I walk in on the first day of class and introduce myself, "Hi, I'm the interpreter for your class." Usually there is not much time to talk about the how (and, in my experience, those conversations don't usually mean much until we've actually gotten through a class or three). On the first day of class I'm usually a bit more concerned about where the Deaf person chooses to sit, and how that affects my range of choices for creating good sightlines between them, me, and the action. If a teacher uses powerpoint, I have to be near the screen, if they use the blackboard, I've got to be near where they are writing , if they lecture without visual aids, then I need to stick close by. Most teachers move, they pace, point things out on the board, may even drift among student's chairs....I have to judge whether the talk coming from the person is most important, or the visual matter they are talking about (on the board or screen), and position myself accordingly.

Most interpreters plant themselves in one place, and deaf people are accustomed to this - they know the interpreter is always going to be in that location. But the ACTION is happening ALL OVER! The meanings move, the important stuff is not only the conceptual message that an interpreter repackages in another language - it is the relationship between those words and the person saying them, to their audience, with particular intentions in mind, and - especially in the case of teaching - with relevant symbols or concepts, a diagram or an equation represented in visual form. I don't have to know how to do calculus, for instance. But I sure as heck need to comprehend the relationships between numbers, the rationale for procedures, and the ways different applications relate to each other! If I do not, then I cannot sign them in a meaningful way.

No one has ever said, "That looks like babble," but it must. I know - plenty of interpreters say, "I just sign the words and they get it because they do know the subject"....I have even had this experience myself. One deaf student in an upper level math course on matrices used to love teasing that she could tell the difference between when I understood what I was signing and when I didn't. How many deaf people just put up with us when we don't understand because it's better than nothing? ugh.

I know that it matters, now, for two reasons. One is that when I get a concept it enables me to sign it differently and I watch the deaf person's mental lightbulb go off simultaneously. This is wicked cool. Obviously, there's an argument to be made for specialist interpreters in the maths and other deeply-developed sciences. But here's the thing, if the teacher understands that the interpreter must understand, and if the teacher realizes that there is no one:one correspondence between English words and ASL signs, and if the teacher is able to incorporate the added dimension of this extra mediator between them and one (or more) students in the class, then magic can happen.

I'm not kidding! I enter a math classroom this spring, introduce myself per usual, and the teacher and I have the usual brief conversation:


You'll use the board a lot?
Yea.
Ok, so I'll try to stay out of your way but I need to be able to be in the same sightline with the student and whatever you're writing.
Ok.


After the first day, immediate debrief: "How did that work?" the teacher asked me! I can tell you I almost fell over. Very well, I responded, I think I stayed out of your way, eh? A few times I get into my head working on the puzzle of expressing a concept and can't simultaneously move out of her path as she fills the boards from right to left....but no problem, she simply moves around me and we continue. Oh, I remember: can you explain this concept of differentiation? Because the sign in ASL for "different" implies that there is no relationship between the objects being described, but I figured out that in the math usage, "differentiation" is a process that can be reversed: in other words, there is a very definite relationship, which seems more like a transfer between terms rather than a categorical distinction. I showed her the sign, "BUT" which is also "DIFFERENT," as we spoke. She began to wrap her mind around the challenge of translation.

We get easier over the next few classes as I find the positions that work best depending on whether she's working the right, center, or left sides of the board. We pace back and forth, with me shifting from right-to-left of her, and sometimes lagging behind as I make the connection between what I'm interpreting and the part of the procedure she wrote on the board several seconds before. I keep myself within her field of vision as much as possible, as well as keeping her, me, and the board in the visual field of the deaf student. It's a kind of choreography. She offers to meet with me to explain the trajectory of the course, help me get a handle on the conceptual flow. My questions are so basic it's embarrassing.

But the meeting helps, and a rapport continues to develop. She knows she's not teaching me, per se, but she is trying to provide the conceptual framework so that the particular lessons make sense. She has grasped that - in order for me to interpret well - I need to know not only the details of the immediate lesson, but especially how that lesson relates to the larger principles this course is all about.

The day I figured out how to sign anti-differentiation conceptually accurately, the deaf student's eyes lit up. I could almost SEE her thinking, "Oh, THAT's how those two processes are related to each other!" Meanwhile, it isn't just my own comprehension that is improving. The teacher has been listening when I've spoken about sightlines, she now notices how far behind her I am in the interpretation and takes advantage of those moments to pause. "I'm sure the other students appreciate it too," she said to me one day, "we are covering this material very quickly." She's gotten so good at observing the visual information that most non-deaf people never even register, that she is aware of when I am waiting for the deaf student to look at me so that I can interpret! I've never had this occur before; I think it is quite extraordinary. She'll see that I'm not signing, look at the deaf student, and then make a judgment how long to wait until she continues. Sometimes she does start before I've delivered all the info to date, and of course I get lost somewhere and have to ask a clarifying question. No problem: immediate and precise repetition is provided.

Last week, some new concepts came up: convergence and divergence. I had convergence down but the way I was understanding divergence it was like the line never catches up to the limit, the limit is constantly receding. But I wasn't sure and I kept listening for some hint about how to convey the concept within the three-dimensionality of American Sign Language. Finally, I asked for clarification. "For the interpreter," I said, "I need to understand the concept of divergence so I can sign it accurately." I showed her what I was doing for convergence, then, as I adapted to show the way I thought I was grasping divergence she jumped in, explaining that the line always crosses the limit, there IS no limit, not because the line can't catch it, but because the line always exceeds it. Wow! I was excited. :-) Ok, I confess, some of it was selfish (I understand how mathematical divergence contrasts with mathematical convergence!) but the neatest thing was the simple 20 seconds it took, the natural flow we've developed where a question from the interpreter is obviously not a reflection on the deaf student, and all that is required is a precise, focused response: a genuine collaboration in guaranteeing conceptual understanding across two perceptually- and grammatically-distinctive languages.

Again, the deaf student's nod of comprehension provided the icing on the cake.

A Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is up for debate and passage in the United Kingdom which uses language about in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in which, critics charge, "a deaf person or embryo with the genes for deafness does not have equal status ('must not be preferred’) to a person without the genes for deafness."

The specific wording at question is in Clause 14 (linked above), and - extremely alarming if you think Deaf people have as much a right "to be" as any other human being - "a number of commentary notes and ‘consultation’ documents that indicate Deaf people are being used as an example of what this amendment would entail in practice."

Filmmakers are now working on a documentary on "the issues arising" from this Clause. (The documentary will presumably include concerns of other communities, for instance those considered with the categoraization and treatment of gender related abnormalities.) Kate of Popkorn offers to interested parties in the U.S. and U.K. an open invitation to comment or participate in the documentary. She does say that in the current version, "Deafness would be included as an ‘abnormality’, therefore any parents would be forced to choose embryos with hearing genes as opposed to those with deaf genes. This is further elaborated upon in the official explanatory notes of the bill…"