Sign language, having been a language that was repressed, has strong associations in the deaf community with freedom and rebellion. In 1880, at an international conference in Milan it was ruled that oral (spoken) education was better for deaf people than manual (signed) education, and they passed a resolution to ban sign language. So for many people it is the language of liberation, of refusal to accept the status quo, of a connection with your identity that rejects the one that has been imposed upon you, particularly the ‘medical’ view of deafness as something to be ‘cured’, for the deaf person to become ‘normal’. Sign language has still no legal status, but can be ‘overheard’ by CCTV. (Damien Robinson)

The “Limitations Permitted” project pictured above combines issues of language and identity with the ‘crossings in space’ that Simone has been dealing with recently. It looks like an incredibly interesting work. Now getting more into my thinking about how deaf people are relating to one another, i see it in Robyn that she is very much defiant about her identity in “Deaf World” versus “Hearing World”, as her translator joked. She was not hesitant at all to create an exclusive conversation amidst those of us who could not follow sign language, and it is very much true that that evening was for her, in some small way, a liberation. The desire to communicate is so strong, so strong. Not sure it is really possible, with the idea of ‘removing language’, to withhold such inherent desire. I would like to speak about so many failures, so many misunderstandings. But we have to make the move first, perhaps.