Back to the subject at hand: Deaf culture, the crab theory, and the allegory of the cave.
Brief recap: I began by exploring the implications of the crab theory in a larger social context then honed in on the deaf community as a more specific and familiar example. Now we can make our way into the cave.
Essentially, Plato's allegory of the cave is a metaphor about how education affects the human soul. Ideally, education is meant to teach one how to reach the ultimate goal of goodness. Here are the opening lines of Book VII: the allegory of the cave.
"Imagine human being living in an underground, cavelike dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself. They've been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bond prevent them from running their heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets" (Grube 514a-514b).
It seems to me that the "cave" (much like the bucket) is meant to be deafness—not the lack of sound but the experience of being deaf. Many (but not all) become a part of this world from childhood. Particularly literal is "...They've been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bond prevent them from running their heads around."
As deaf people, we are told that there is only so much we can accomplish because of the lack of sound (which really stems from a difference in communication abilities—i.e. speaking/writing English). This experience of the cave is similar to the experience of the bucket—the cave represents a limited intellectual growth while the bucket signifies a lack of interaction beyond the shared experience of "deafness". Since not all people who can hear are outside of the cave, one might contend that there's a bucket in the cave—subject to the similar conditions of the cave. 'Crabs in a cave' is a fitting metaphor since Plato also espouses a concept of innate intelligence that requires time to develop but speech to express it. [Aristotle says of deafness and education, "Deaf people could not be educated without hearing, people could not learn." But then again, Aristotle had a lot of buckets for people who weren't Greek citizens.]
Side Note: Contrary to popular belief, ASL does not translate directly to English. ASL contains a linguistic system just as complex as Spanish or English. It should also be noted that ASL is not universal, different countries and regions have their own systems of sign language. Thus, when in class my mind (and any other deaf student using ASL interpreters) is juggling two different languages and attempting to reconcile the differences. Similar to Lily, I'm sure (except that I've been juggling the two for ten years now).
In the bucket, the experience is also of seeing only what is in front of them, and naming the passing shadows of what is real. I suppose the shadows in the bucket would be more ambiguous, undefined, and completely interwoven. The shadows within the bucket are comforting because they are familiar. It seems that while being unbound is the first step to enlightenment for the natural citizens of the cave, the crabs are already unbound but are instead confined to the bucket.
But if a crab were out of the bucket but still in the cave— what is seen seems grander, dominating, and more real—the reality of the world that moves but does not stop to explain why it moves. There are no other crabs to help name those shadows, and not knowing what to think of a thing is disconcerting. The shadows in the cave are now less ambiguous, more defined since there is now space for them to run their necessary sizes. This difference between the shadows in the bucket and the shadows in the cave would be perplexing because it is difficult to comprehend how reality is different from one experience (bucket) to another (cave).
If reality differs, then it is not static. If reality is not static then (to the best of my knowledge) this reality cannot be the root of experience. If this is not the root of experience, then it is not the ultimate reality but illusions layering over reality. The bucket becomes a layer, the cave, another layer, the fire another layer. Being dragged out of that cave sloughs off the layers of false knowledge but the problem is that few see the value in dragging a crab out of its cave.
What I refer to here is educating the crab—there are not enough philosopher-kings (teachers) committed to coming back down to the cave for the crabs. Instead several crabs must wait and continue naming the shadows in the cave or the shadows in the bucket, feeling uneasy, feeling controlled. Yet the citizens of the cave fault the crabs for not knowing any better than to be in the bucket.
Like Ella, the crab out of the bucket has to wonder: "who put the crabs in there?" and promptly return to its fellow crabs to let them know that a singular experience of the world does not define intelligence. Together the crabs have to work to establish a home outside of the cave.
0 comments:
Post a Comment