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Think–Between: A Deaf Studies Commonplace Book 30 BRENDA JO BRUEGGEMANN 3 I owe a great debt to several colleagues for their roles in making this chapter happen. First, and most significantly, there is Dirksen Bauman, who helped instigate—and inspire—the ideas here when he invited me to be a part of the summer 2002 “Deaf Studies Think Tank.” He encouraged me to write an introductory personal statement for the think tank that became, in essence, the genesis of this chapter’s content. Later, as we continued to hold vibrant electronic and face-to-face conversations about my ideas and examples under development, he further influenced not only the content but also the very form of this chapter. In a sense, I think of this piece as a collaboration with Dirksen. Colleagues Cathy Kudlick (University of California–Davis) and Jim Ferris (University of Wisconsin) also came to play a part in the production of this piece as the three of us shared a kind of “trialogue” performance in a session, called simply “Between,” at the 2004 Society for Disability Studies meeting in St. Louis. When they helped me further expand the signing and body space to create a six-armed insect, I knew then that after nearly two years of tinkering with this chapter, I had finally reached the (between) place where I not only felt comfortable—but now actually wanted—to put the ideas in print. This essay is adapted from my chapter in Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking published by University of Minnesota Press and used here by permission. For some time now, I have been imagining a theory of “betweenity,” especially as it exists in Deaf culture, identity, and language. And because I teach a great deal in the larger umbrella of disability studies these days, I’ve also been thinking about the expansion of that deaf-betweenity to disability more largely. (Of course, I’ve also then been thinking about the way that deafness itself occupies an interesting “betweenity” in relationship to disability identity.) In any case—whether deaf, disabled , or between—I’m finding that I’m generally more interested in the hot dog rather than the bun, the cream filling in the Oreo (which, if you’ve noticed, has been changing a lot lately) rather than just the twinned chocolate sandwich cookies on the outside. Give me a hyphen any day. To be sure, the words on either side of the hyphen are interesting too; but it is what’s happening in that hyphen—the moment of magic artistry there in that half-dash—that really catches my eye. BE T W E E N “DE A F ” A N D “D E A F ” (O R , T H E NA M E S WE CA L L OU R S E LV E S ) In disability culture and studies, as well as in Deaf culture and studies, we often get back to—or maybe, yes, we also get forward to—discussions about what we do and don’t want to be called. Deaf culture, in particular, has been around the block with this discussion for a long, long time. I offer three exhibits (call them angles) for consideration: Exhibit A (from the University of Brighton, U.K. http://staffcentral.brighton.ac.uk/ clt/disability/Deaf.html) Note on terminology: The term “Deaf” (with a capital D) is the preferred usage of some people who are either born profoundly deaf or who become deaf at a very early age and who regard themselves as belonging to the Deaf community. Like people in many communities, those within the Deaf community are bound together by a feeling of identifying with other Deaf people. People in the Deaf community share, amongst other things, a sense of Deaf pride, traditions, values, lifestyles, humor, folklore, art, theatre, as well as a rich common language . . . Exhibit B (From a copyedited essay on interpreters that I received from university press editors): I do not understand the distinctions between use of upper- and lowercase D for deafness? Please clarify for my own knowledge and for the general scope of this book. Exhibit C (From Gina Oliva, author of Alone in the Mainstream: A Deaf Woman Remembers Public Schools, the first book in the new “Deaf Lives” series of autobiography , biography, and documentary from Gallaudet University Press that I edit. This is a memo Gina sent to me after the copyeditors asked her to double-check and “clarify” her use of...

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