Secret Histories

[sqbr]

Having finished my Phd and had some time for my brain to bounce back, I've been filling my brain with lots of different things, including history. The thing is, I find most history books to be either too dry and technical for my not-so-arty brain, or very conventional and uninteresting: all about the lives of kings and other rich white men, and tending to uncritically regurgitate the traditional and nostalgic ideas people already have with just a few glosses of extra facts. I think the desire to try to fit morally grey people like bushrangers and colonists into neat little good guy/bad guy boxes is one of the reasons I find my own country's history so unbearably dull.

One solution to this is to seek out histories which are explicitly from a more non-conventional viewpoint. Tony Robinson is about the only tv historian I can think of who does this, mainly with the lower classes, ie with his Worst jobs in history.

Beneath the cut: a synopsis of what I've found so far, including "The Homosexual History of Australia", "Damned Whores and Gods Police: the history of women in australia" and "Understanding Deaf Culture".

The Celluloid Closet did a really good job for american cinema, so when I saw The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia on Quickflix I added it, and sure enough for a change I actually enjoyed learning australian history. It's not the best made documentary ever, and it both conflates and ignores issues of transgender and transexuality (ie when talking about "passing women", women who lived as men at the turn of the century, I don't think it even suggested the possibility that they say themselves as men: either they were straight women who just wanted male privileges, or they were lesbians), and the use of random movie clips for emphasis didn't always work, but I still enjoyed it. Looking for a link I found this page about aussie gay history which unlike the documentary mentions how aboriginal society treated it's own homosexual members before european settlement.

I enjoyed In our time: memoir of a revolution, about the history of american second wave feminism, so had high hopes for Damned Whores and Gods Police: the history of women in australia, but got bored. I might give it another go when I'm entirely better. Amusingly: Susan Brownmillar spent a page talking about how apart from Germaine Greer, aussie feminists were/are a bunch of hive-minded marxists too caught up in convention and conformity to buck the system and get anything done, which I found a bit grating. In her introduction, Anne Summers (who worked on Ms in America for some time) spends like five pages ranting about how american feminists are a bunch of celebrity obsessed narcissists, too blinded by idealism and self promoting factionalism to work with each other and government and get anything done :D

Finally, I came to the sudden realisation recently that one of the consequences of Amniat (In ACOS) having access to telepathy is that there's now a way for deaf people to make themselves heard, which means that to write the story properly I should figure out what that means for them and everyone else. Since I know NOTHING about deafness I had a look at the Perth library catalogue and got out the one adult book they had on the subject(*): Understanding Deaf Culture. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it since it's a history book chosen at random with no recommendations, but it's actually really interesting. It really is this whole unknown history I'd never heard much about, the way deaf schools changed deaf people's life irrevocably, forming these closed, heavily controlled environments which were a mix of wonderful togetherness and community building, and horrible abuse and segregation but lean large in people's minds either way. I'm reading a chapter about the first professional deaf theatre, where a hearing theatre director who just liked the look of sign language got a bunch of deaf actors together, and they went from doing straight forward amateur productions aimed just at the deaf to these beautiful professional productions with fine costumes, choreography, and integrated voice actors, which hearing audiences loved..and deaf ones couldn't understand, since everyone was moving too much and too fast.

And as well as these I've been listening to various podcasts from Berkley, which has been really interesting too, university level history etc has a much more nuanced and complex story to tell than your usual aimed-at-the-layman stuff, even at a first year level.

(*)This is Perth City library, there's more in the overall WA system! I also read the like 10 page children's picture book, which was disturbingly educational, thus illustrating how little I know on the subject.

Comments

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia, looks pretty interesting.

If you found the Whores and God's Police one to boring (I did) though I picked it up, after getting recommended it in Geography after directly after reading The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees. Now that one was good. Its about the first ship of convict women sent across to Australia (so not quite the same topic, but its still interesting and historical!)

My only problem the first bit kinda doesn't really follow any pattern (just tells the stories of many of the women that wound up on board the ship) making it a little hard to get into but after that I found it really really fascinating, I think because it focused not just on the history, but the personalities of the women on board.

I was going to say that I was recommending that as someone who until recently had a science background and no experience in history, but then realised, I'm an arts student now AND I'm taking a history unit this semester. :( Oh how times change!

I think most of Australian history is kinda dull, purely because there's so little of it that doesn't depend largely on the history of a million other places. As well as the good/bad simplification thing. Plus that whole bushrangers/outback thing gets depressing when you realise, that despite what is said, most of our history is based purely in the cities, and in many cases didn't have that much relevance. And at least at the level I was taught (though that was being taught to 'dumb' for my liking back then), we were never given any context, or history for those other places, which you know, have a lot more history and fascinating things going on.

Australian geography though is hilariously fascinating! Learn more about that (you do learn a lot of historical stuff, as its important for context with geography, especially when looking at things like immigration). And I think, its less about the judging more about trying to understand than history is.

[alias_sqbr]

I'll keep an eye out for "The Floating Brothel", thankyou.

then realised, I'm an arts student now AND I'm taking a history unit this semester. :(

Heh. Yeah, I was recommending "easy" physics books to my little brothers then remembered I have 2/3 of a physics major :)

You do know that geography is my absolute least favourite subject of all time right? Only non-sport school subject I came close to failing. That said, my main issue was maps (I have The Worst Spacial Sense Ever) I might be alright with the stuff that didn't expect me to know where Korea is on a map or whatever. Maybe. Hmm.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

*laughs* No I didn't realise you had such a hate for geography. That said, I am guilty of pretty much ignoring the mapping side of geography (GIS is basically making maps and its taught terribly at UWA atm). The social and culture sides of things (especially how they change throughout history) are pretty interesting, though being able to read a map and say oh look here's australia here's indonesia here's how they've interacted, oh I can see how that distance might be involved might be useful.

[alias_sqbr]

See, exactly, and then I'm all confused because I think Indonesia is somewhere up near Japan or whatever :)

(True story: to make this example I looked at a map of the world, and was genuinely surprised by where Indonesia was, I thought it was closer. Also I was all "OMG since when is Algeria so big??")

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

The thing I've found about learning about deaf culture has been the general assumptions made by hearing folk. For example when explaining how there are different sign languages, dialects and regional terms (just as there are with spoken languages) I've on many occassions heard "oh but wouldn't it be easier if they all used the same language"? Well yes it would, but so would all hearing people using the same language but I don't see you going off and learning esperanto. I was also really disappointed with the way Scrubs (yeah, I know!) dealt with a deaf man who didn't want his son to have a cochlea implant and how the characters went behind his back and got consent off his (hearing) ex wife. It showed all the poor assumptions made by hearing people about deaf people and didn't cover why there is opposition to such implants other than "oh he doesn't want to loose something that connects him with his son" (I've been told by deaf people that they generally don't give the person a full range of hearing so they are still partially deaf, but the kids are then expected to abandon their sign language and grow up as "hearing" which they are not). It sounds like the book is quite good, I'll have to remember to check it out sometime.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, it goes into stuff like that a bit, it's definitely made me reconsider the way I view sign language etc. The main issue for me is that it assumes more knowledge than I have (ie so far it's mentioned that treating kids with cochlear implants like regular hearing kids is bad, but not why) which would be less of an issue for you. I think there's definitely something different in reading a book about the deaf by Deaf authors.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

There is a pretty readable Oliver Sachs book Seeing Voices about deaf culture.

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm, ok, I'll look out for that. One advantage this book has is that it's by Deaf authors, and tries to give an inside view, but a well educated outsider's view is valuable too.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Can I recommend a couple more books?

"The Mask Of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community", by Harlan Lane. I went to a speech of his when he was in Perth a good while back - very engaging. He is hearing, but has an insider/radical viewpoint, quite confronting, but I like that. I had a copy of this, but I've lent it to someone and can't remember who.

Another terrific one (and again one which has gone missing from my library, grrr!) is Nora Ellen Groce's "Everyone here spoke sign language: Hereditary deafness on Martha's Vineyard." There was a founder effect which led to early populations on the island of Martha's Vineyard to be around half Deaf, half hearing. Everyone signed, and deafness wasn't actually considered a disability. I remember in one bit of the book, one of the people interviewed was thinking back and couldn't remember whether a particular person was deaf or not.

A quick and on-line read is "A Linguistic Big Bang", which is about the only time linguists have ever closely observed the birth of a new language, Nicaraguan Sign Language.

[alias_sqbr]

Ooh, yes, "Martha's Vineyard" came up a couple of times in my reading.

And thankyou for those recs. Now I have to see if any of these books are in the library system (I found this awesome looking book about ancient greek attitudes to disability but there didn't seem to be any copies in the system :( )

EDIT: I just read that article, it's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for, thankyou!