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Epilogue: The Road Ahead
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193 5 Epilogue: The Road Ahead One can only be grateful for the often thankless work of the deaf militants of [the late nineteenth century], considering the conditions under which they acted: professional obligations tougher than today’s, modest incomes, [and] limited leisure time.1 At the turn of the twentieth century, the French deaf community was still attempting to promote group solidarity. In 1903, the many different deaf mutualist associations voluntarily joined together to form the National Union of the Societies of the Deaf (Union nationale des sociétés de sourds-muets), with its main office in Paris. The new group had about 2500 members out of perhaps a total deaf population at that time of 30,000 people.2 The main objective of the National Union was to streamline the way that deaf people handled retirement, death benefits, unemployment allotments, and other social needs. This was certainly a step forward. Yet, there were unfortunately still too many deaf people in France who were not personally involved with any deaf organization at the turn of the twentieth century. Though Henri Gaillard admitted that not all deaf people were engaged in community activity, he also believed that deaf sociability would prove to the hearing community that “[deaf people] have the right to take charge of their own interests.” Gaillard realized that deaf people had to work for social change to gain a larger profile in French society. In this way, their social image would also improve because the hearing community would no longer regard them through the lens of “vulgar prejudices.”3 Gaillard called for deaf people to remain optimistic and stay true to their own society; however, he also understood that the deaf community was inextricably tied to a larger French society that continued to harbor negative social images of deaf people. Certainly, this was a sad reality facing many deaf leaders in the years before World War I. The deaf community was not alone in its problems with the Third Republic. Other marginalized groups like women, workers, and immigrants remained outside republican political culture. The right to vote— the key benefit of republican citizenship—was not enough to quell dissent among these groups that felt invisible to those politicians controlling the levers of power.4 For the deaf community, their criticism of the Republic most often revolved around the oralist school policy that the Congress of Milan (1880) had formally enshrined. Twenty years later, the deliberations of the international congress of 1900 revealed to many deaf leaders the flagrant abuse of the government’s oralist policy. The educational fallout from oralism in France had serious consequences for deaf society. As late as 1998, 80 percent of deaf children in France were still illiterate after twelve years in school.5 This was the outcome that many deaf leaders had feared in the 1890s. Despite the stranglehold of oralism in schools for the deaf children, French Sign Language continued to be a living language inside the community ’s deaf associations during the twentieth century. A rebirth of deaf associational life also began to occur gradually during the 1960s. 194 Deaf Identity and Social Images in Nineteenth-Century France Mutualist celebration in Amiens, 1906. (Source: Revue générale de l’enseignement des sourds-muets, n. 5, November 1906, n.p.) [3.144.124.232] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 03:17 GMT) Three groups met in 1964 at the Paris Deaf Institute and tried to achieve consensus on one single organization.6 In May 1966, the French deaf community officially created the National Confederation of the Deaf of France (Confédération nationale des sourds de France [CNSF]). In 1971, the CNSF organized an international conference of deaf people in Paris. A decade later, the French government issued a decree that recognized the CNSF as an organization of “public value.” By 1985, the European Union had created a special umbrella organization for deaf people, the European Union of the Deaf, and the CNSF willingly joined this European-wide association.7 In 1987, the CNSF renamed itself the Fédération nationale des sourds de France (FNSF) and began to set its social and cultural agenda as well as define its relationship with the hearing community. Some of their grievances revolved around practical issues that generally reflected the activism of the French deaf population a century earlier. For instance, the FNSF wanted improved education for deaf youth, especially in secondary education and beyond; it...