The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community

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Knopf, 1992 - Education - 310 pages
The author of the pioneering history of the deaf When the Mind Hears now continues his advocacy for the deaf community with a hard-hitting, provocative new book. The Mask of Benevolence is at once a deeply moving celebration of the unique manual language and culture of the modern deaf community, a scathing indictment of the heedlessness and hypocrisies of many of its hearing "benefactors", and an expose of the ways in which the "experts" in the scientific, medical, and educational establishments who purport to serve the deaf actually do them grievous harm. With great eloquence Lane argues that the relationship between the deaf community and those who claim to help them resembles that between colonized and colonizer, resulting in the suppression of the oppressed group's language and culture--in the dehumanization of the oppressed to the profit of the oppressor. He shows, for example, how the "medicalization" of cultural deafness does more for medical professionals and the manufacturers of prosthetic devices (hearing aids, "bionic ears", etc.) than for deaf children; how the "mainstreaming" of deaf children in hearing schools actually obstructs their education--aiding not the students but the interests of various medical and rehabilitation specialists by putting a premium on their services. Impeccably documented, The Mask of Benevolence offers an impassioned and highly compelling case in support of embracing deaf language and culture, bilingual education, and the blessings of cultural diversity.

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Contents

Hearing Representations of Deaf People
6
The Infirmity and Cultural Models of Deaf People
13
PART
29
Copyright

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About the author (1992)

Harlan Lane was born in Brooklyn on August 19, 1936. After receiving both a B.A. and an M.A. from Columbia University in 1958, he went on to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1960 and, later, a second doctoral degree from the Sorbonne in 1973. Lane began his teaching career as a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. While there, he also founded and directed the Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior. From 1969 to 1973, Lane taught linguistics at the Sorbonne in Paris, while completing his doctoral degree there. Upon returning to the United States, he taught for a year at the University of California, San Diego, and then moved to Northeastern University, in Boston, where he is a professor of psychology. He has also served as the department's chair and founded the Center for Research in Hearing, Speech, and Language. Lane has written several books about deafness. He received Harvard's Thomas J. Wilson Award for The Wild Boy of Aveyron: A History of the Education of Retarded, Deaf and Hearing Children. Another book, When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf, received the Book Award from the President's Commission on the Handicapped in 1986. Lane was also the recipient of distinguished service awards from both the Massachusetts State Association of the Deaf and the National Association of the Deaf in 1987. Other titles include The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community and A Journey into the Deaf World.

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