Philosophical Oppression Must Stop!

The feeling of the philosophical oppression is not, for all that, the notion of the philosophical oppression. It lays the foundations for it, and that is all.

While the 1988 Deaf President Now demonstration was about civil movement, today’s campus demonstration is about philosophical oppression. It is alive; in other words, it must stop or else reverberate through every single place around the world.

So it is with the GUFSSA protest we have gathered together in person and in distance. But there again what interests me is not works or minds of everyone, criticism of which would call for another form of philosophical leadership. Never, perhaps, have our great minds so different, and yet we recognize as identical the spiritual academy in which we wish to get under way...with a new philosophy.

At Gallaudet University, to date, there exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral: namely, that a Deaf individual is always a prey to philosophical oppression. Once she or he has chosen a mode of communication in the place of American Sign Language, for example, she or he cannot free herself or himself from the oppression. A Deaf individual who has become conscious of the philosophical oppression is forever bound to it. A Deaf individual devoid of ASL and conscious of its embedded culture so has ceased to belong to the future. That is wrong.

What is perceptible in philosophical oppression of the IKJ administration will be perhaps even more so in the upcoming JKF administration. To be sure, it is hard to outline the meaning of philosophical oppression, but it can be felt throughout Gallaudet University today. It is not for me to wonder to what extension this oppressive attitude is linked. I merely have to wonder if the spectacle of philosophical oppression justifies it.

Let’s assert the fact, for example, that JKF’s childhood having been so isolated by deafness, she ultimately returns to its harshest aspect at Gallaudet University. I do not want to suggest anything here, but how could she fail to read in her twelve-year tenure at Gallaudet University the signs of philosophical oppression? Who is she that does not know?

Philosophical oppression must stop at Gallaudet University.