The Starling’s Tale: A Performative Ethnography Showing Deaf Children’s Schooling in the Republic of Ireland

The Performers

The Narrators, The Authors as Speakers, The One and All Chorus, The Intertitle Ensemble, The Pentimenti Curators, and the Scholarly Community.

Narrator Number One

[Speak] The call of deaf children’s stories of love, care, and solidarity in residential schools is the theme of this performative ethnography (Spry, 2016). What follows is a re/presentation of the kinds of loss, stigma, trauma, and “childhood interruptions” experienced by deaf children. This is a story of children’s resistance to oralism—the conviction that deaf children can be taught to speak using lip reading, speech, and mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech, instead of using sign language, the first and/or preferred language of deaf people in Ireland. At its deep heart’s core, this is a story of children’s willful embodiment of a language of their own against the official and decontextualized other register of oralism. Sociologically, it is as much a story of self-identity as self-difference (Johnson, 1987, p. 164) and, more poststructurally, a “desiring, discursive, and performative voice” (Jackson, 2009, p. 173).

The One and All Chorus

[Speak/gesture with wings]

hands swirling, swooping, rolling, darting

gathering, like starlings in full flight

rippling around perched faces

the stare at the window

like any feathered thing

singing quavers, breves, refrains

as only the caged bird sings

and . . . and . . . and . . . fate

omnes at singulatum

Author Number One

[Speak] What you have just seen and heard titled, “Omnes at Singulatum” or “One and All,” is a piece of found poetry with an upper wing composed entirely by the authors and the lower wing composed of lines from literary and academic other sources. Found poetry is created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry (a literary equivalent of collage), by making changes in spacing, lines, or by adding or deleting text, and through these media imparting new understandings and meanings (Butler-Kisber, 2010).

Author Number Two

[Speak] Sources for the radials on these wings include Emily Dickinson’s “feathers,” Robert Hardy’s “refrains,” Mayo Angelous’s “cages” and William Butler Yeats “stares.” Other sources, other voices, other rooms will undoubtedly occur to you during this performance.

Bertolt Brecht: Playwright

[Speak] The stage is bare and deliberate and the light is white and without illusion, as befits this ensemble variant of “epic theatre,” also described as “dialectical theatre” or “theatre of showing” (Unwin, 2005). I developed epic theater on the boards of the Berliner Ensemble which produced plays such as “Mother Courage and Her Children,” “The Threepenny Opera,” and “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” among others (Unwin, 2005). The Berliner Ensemble was a radical and revolutionary forum for combining political ideas and critical aesthetics, including nonlinear, fractured plots, with self-contained scenes or episodes, gestures to denote social attitudes and human relationships, and curious and evocative banners, designed to turn the narrative and, in turn, the spectators. My plays include a strong pedagogical focus and you can anticipate some directions, questions, and recitals.

Narrator Number Two

[Speak] A clutch of techniques or “techne” of lights, sounds, and images has been assembled for this performance. On the virtual wrap-around screen in front of you dances a fledgling starling silhouetted against a flock of other starlings, like the reel in the flickering light they used in the cinema halls or picture houses in small towns in mid-20th century Ireland. The flock is moving along an individual horizon under a universal sky, traveling back, tumbling forward, broken and dirty, one and all.

Narrator Number One

[Speak] This puts in mind Sartre’s (2007) existentialism, where all lives are at some deep level homogeneous, products of their own history, yet also producers of their own history and as a result, the universal is always singular and the singular always universal, like one spectral starling silhouetted against a gray sky, showing signs of solidarity, more self-difference than self-identity in the way Johnson (1987) describes the “signs of the authentic voice” (p. 164).

Norman Denzin: Author

[Speak] Combining interaction, hermeneutics and ethnography, this performative ethnography is very much a practical example of the explanatory framework for synthesizing societal conflicts and transitions in lifeworld experiences that I discussed some twenty-five years ago (Denzin, 1989).

Narrator Number Two

[Speak] Irish sign language (ISL) is the indigenous language of the Deaf community and research shows that sign languages are full languages with their own complex linguistic structures, rules, and features. It is a visual and spatial language with its own distinct grammar and not only is it a language of the hands but also of the face and body (Irish Deaf Society, 2017).

Narrator Number Two

[Speak] The narrative sources and techniques used in this performative ethnography are drawn from a “rhizomatic archive” (Filewood, 2009, p. 62), containing the roots, stems, and nodes of sociological and anthropological ethnography, including autoethnography, ethnodrama, ethnotheater, performance ethnography, among others.

Narrator Number One

[Speak] We are especially influenced by Tami Spry’s (2016) performing ethnography, with its focus on the methodological praxis of body/I/we/word and Maggie McClure’s (2009) “voices of insufficiency,” with its reminder that we are only dealing with still points and lit up moments in an uncertain and continually unfolding flawed voice.

The All and One Chorus

[Speak/gesture with wings]

hands swirling, swooping, rolling, darting

gathering, like starlings in full flight

rippling around perched faces

the stare at the window

like any feathered thing

singing quavers, breves, refrains

as only the caged bird sings

and . . . and . . . and . . . fate

omnes at singulatum

Author Number One

[Speak] Two ambient sounds, one inner, the other outer, inhabit the soundscape in this performance. The first sound includes sonic, spectral, political, and ventriloquized voices—a very public voice.

Author Number Two

[Speak] The second sound is quiet, whispered, and reflective and reverberates with and beyond the unfolding narrative, or the objects within the performances, or with personal and wounding experiences—a very personal voice—a reverberation of your own noiseless voice.

Author Number One

[Speak] At home, my mother reads from a book filled with pictures of birds. She leans over and speaks to my ear. Beside her, I feel a sense of security, as if I was the most important person in her life. One morning, my mother teaches me something about birds, not in words or pictures but through her actions, pointing at the sky where birds are in full flight. “Birds have wings,” she says, “They have wings that make them fly.” Standing on the pavement, we look up and pay attention to birds sitting perched on a wire. My mother points at a flock of birds darting across the sky, their flight strong and direct. “They are starlings,” she says. As my eyes follow the direction of her finger, I watch with curious fascination as the feathered creatures swirl and loop about the sky, going in different speeds and directions.

Linda Massei: Author

[Speak] What follows is the first in a series of intertitles, influenced by my reading of Deleuze’s (1989) writings on the break between the talkie and silent pictures where Deleuze describes silent pictures not as silent but as noiseless [where] the voices of actors are communicated through a “seen” and “read” device of early cinema described as the “intertitle” or braided discursive narrative thread (Massei, 2009, p. 49).

Narrator Number One

[Speak] Intertitles are presented throughout the remainder of this performance by “The Intertitle Ensemble Chorus.” The intertitles like those described by Deleuze (1989) represent useful and meaningful noiseless moments. Think of those silhouetted linking narratives or “placards” reminiscent of the silent pictures of Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin.

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak/show]

OPEN IN VIEWER

A sudden sensory experience

Author Number Two

[Speak] The doctor gently tilts my head to the other side, and begins to prod and probe inside my ears. I find pleasure in the tingling sensation of cold metal. Leaning back, he stares at me as if I’m some kind of curiosity and the pitiful eyes of the nurse throw mournful looks at me. I find solemn looks from my mother and, sensing her anxiety, my stomach tightens to a knot. I wonder if someone is trying to save me from something inside my ears. A short time later, my head is strapped with headphones and a nun dressed in white monastic dress and black veil smiles and pats my head. As she speaks, her lips stretch like elastic. She shifts around before sitting behind a large machine replete with control keys and gauges. I fidget nervously at the wires on the headphones and feel a sudden jolt in my ears. The nun raises her eyebrows questioningly. After each beeping sound, I raise my hand. Then I keep my hand still for some time until the nun shakes her head at my parents. As she speaks to me, she raises her hand, blocking the view to her lips. Instinctively, I push her hand down to see her mouth. The nun’s body goes into convulsions and I stare at her, unsure what I had done to make her laugh. Later, a solidified ear piece is inserted in my left ear, but I vehemently protest to my parents. Pleading with my eyes, I tell them the thing is making my skin sore, but the nun puts her finger to her pouting lips, telling me to be quiet. A hearing aid about the size of a deck of cards is pocketed inside a pouch. The pouch is secured in a harness, strapped around my body at chest level, and hidden inside my white cardigan. I stare at the machine, moving my fingers along the microphone. I press against the volume control switch at the top end and open the battery compartment at the rear.

Author Number One

[Speak] The night before we journey to Dublin, I watch curiously as my mother fills my suitcase with more clothes. “Three of everything,” she mouths, holding up each item of clothes. She points at my name tag stitched on the collar of my shirt and embroidered with my name. I place toy soldiers and picture books with my belongings and my mother closes the suitcase. Fear rises with the words “promise to write.”

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak/show]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Through an open car window, a long avenue, leading to a white building

Author Number Two

[Speak] We pass through the two pillars at the gateway as my father turns the green Vauxhall Viva into a long stretch of avenue. From the passenger seat, my mother turns around and smiles nervously. “We are here now,” she says before quickly turning her back to me. Closing my eyes, I bask in the warm, soothing glow on my face as my father motors along the avenue. My father parks the car a few hundred feet from the concrete steps at the front entrance. My eyes are drawn to a large black cross affixed against a wall. Soon a smattering of boys emerge from the side entrance, and a nun dressed in blue slacks and a black veil gives chase, causing the children to scatter around like birds. The children gather together, turning and swooping to a spot where they stand and gaze at us with curious eyes. My gaze is averted to the children’s hands darting around their faces at great speed like starlings in full flight, their hands creating rippling and swirling patterns as their fingers gracefully dance in air. With my mother at my side and my father leading the way, we mount the steps to the front porch. I turn my head around and stare, fascinated by the children’s hand movements. I watch with interest their fingers flexing into contours and shapes. Instinctively, I venture ahead to meet them, but the gentle hand of my mother takes hold of my arm, stopping me in my tracks. She tells me not to run off but, sensing my newfound curiosity, leans down until her face is close to mine. “They are deaf like you. You will meet them later.”

Valente and Boldt: Authors

The body constantly travels through ever-changing moments and contexts accompanied by its ability to vary from what was or could do or could be. This is the rhizomatic space, not a “lacking body” of corporeal deficiencies but rather an incorporeal space where assumptions and codes of bodily lack are destratified . . . The body is constantly “becoming other” within the rhizomatic space (Valente & Boldt, 2015, p. 569).

Author Number One

[Speak] The priest gesticulates salutations to my parents and they shake hands. As his eyes settle on mine, I recoil in shock and retreat behind my mother. Sick with fear, I clutch her hands tightly. The man places his right hand on my head and moves it upward, showing the sign that grown-ups don’t cry. He pats my head and wags his finger at me. My father tells me to mind my manners and answer the priest, but my mouth simply opens and closes. The priest gestures to my parents to follow him inside the doorway. A woman dressed in blue slacks with a navy cardigan over a white blouse and a black and white veil on her head appears from the doorway with a smile and shakes hands with my parents. I sense a strange, dry, laundry-like odor emanating from her dress. I become transfixed by the dangling crucifix. My mother leans down to me. “That lady is Sr. Brigid. She is in charge of the school.”

Author Number Two

[Speak] As my mother straightens up, Sr. Brigid’s eyes lock into mine, causing the hairs to prickle at the back of my neck. I study her hands as she approaches me and at her chest, and struggle to hold back tears, unable to express the sudden unpleasant feeling of doom. I search my father’s face for clues of distress and find none, but the distress signals on my mother’s face are as clear as they are intuitive.

Maggie McClure: Author

[Speak] Voice research . . . attend [s] to such features as laughter, mimicry, mockery, silence, stuttering, tears, slyness, shyness, shouts, jokes, lies, irrelevance, partiality, inconsistency, self-doubt, masks, false starts, false “fronts,” and faulty memories—not as impediments, or lapses to be corrected, mastered, read “through” or written off, but as perplexing resources for the achievements of a dissembling “authentic” voice (McClure, 2009, p. 8).

Author Number One

[Speak] We walk down a long stretch of corridor before turning into an opened door. Inside, we are guided into a furnished room filled with several leather armchairs. Pictures of religious figures hang on yellow walls and a vase stands on a round mahogany table. On a shelf, a few feet above me, a large marble statue of the Virgin Mary colored in blue and white towers over me. Immaculately clean light blue walls of corridors convey an aura of coldness. The air is thick with the smell of floor polish, and the dry, barren scent of nuns’ clothes wafts to my nostrils as we walk through a maze of corridors and hallways. Nuns appear and disappear and children’s faces peer out from the play hall. We continue walking until we reach a lofty hall. Inside, we find several framed portraits of nuns hanging on gray walls.

The All and One Chorus

[Speak/gesture with wings]

hands swirling, swooping, rolling, darting

gathering, like starlings in full flight

rippling around perched faces

the stare at the window

like any feathered thing

singing quavers, breves, refrains

as only the caged bird sings

and . . . and . . . and . . . fate

omnes at singulatum

Author Number Two

[Speak] My mother is deep in conversation with a couple of nuns who appear out of nowhere. The two ladies move swiftly toward me, their dresses brushing against my face. Their bodies shield my eyes from the view of my parents.

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak/show]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Relief, darkness, and finally a goodbye kiss

Author Number One

[Speak] I move to the other side and breathe a sigh of relief after I spot my parents standing near me. Within a short time, we pass through dim corridors that seem to stretch on for an eternity. Presently, the whole place darkens, becoming dimmer, shadowy, fainter, and increasingly subdued. Suddenly the whole world stands still and all eyes turn to me. Before I begin to ask why everyone has stopped walking, my mother kneels before me and holds my arm in her hands. Her face is ashen and her lips are firmly closed, in my mind a sure sign of distress. Through watery eyes, I watch her speak. Words like home soon, write, parcel, and sweets and chocolates have no meaning for me. When she finishes speaking, she leans forward and kisses my cheek. My father mouths: “See you soon.”

Author Number Two

[Speak] I stare at my parents, my mouth open. Bewildered and immobile, I wonder about this sudden display of affection. Once more, nausea takes hold of my stomach, and that awful sick feeling of dread rises from the pit of my stomach like bile. Gripped with profound anxiety, I search for something to say, unable to find the will to cry or protest. The crucifix continues to dangle before my eyes. Sensing that my fate is now sealed, I sob my heart out and sputter words of protest: “Please don’t leave me!” I plead with my eyes but nothing seems to move my parents to change their minds. As my chest tightens, my breathing quickens. I shake my head vigorously, feeling utterly terrified at the thought of being left with strangers. My mother takes hold of my outstretched hand and offers words of comfort. Her moving lips swim before my soggy eyes. Taking my hand in hers, she guides me down the corridor and we continue walking in semidarkness. The tension in my body begins to dissipate and I relax a little.

Author Number One

[Speak] Suddenly, two nuns emerge from a shadowy corner and stand on each side of me, their hands firmly gripping mine. A large, heavy-set lady moves to my left and a tall and slender woman with deep-set piercing eyes shifts to the other side. The same arid scent from the nuns’ clothes is now stronger than ever. Suddenly the gait and gesture of the nuns begin to change. In one sudden, sweeping, determined movement, their strong arms hoist me upward. I flail my legs with all my power, fighting to break free as the nuns carry me up the stairs with the ease of a man carrying a sack of potatoes. Turning my head around, I stare in shock at the empty corridor. Where have my parents gone? What is happening? Panic-stricken and frightened, I struggle to break free, but powerful hands hold tightly to my legs and arms.

Curator Number One

[Speak] There is one significant break with the “classical” variant of “epic theater” in this performative ethnography. Stage, page, and sounds are disassembled by three “pentimenti” (Hellman, 1973).

Curator Number Two

[Speak] As spectators you are invited to “splice the emotional vein” (Lupton, 1998) and paint a painting out of a painting and, in this way, generate “illuminative epiphanies” (Denzin, 1989), new social imaginaries and possible actions and what Spry (2016) describes as “utopian performatives” (p. 87).

Curator Number Three

[Speak] Influenced by a Deleuzian (2003) “logic of sensation,” the “double hermeneutic” of painting a painting out of a painting reaches its intensity following each self-contained scene or episode in the color weaves of Limbaugh’s “red,” Bacon’s “cobalt” and le Brocquy’s “gray.”

Curator Number One: The Brothers Limbaugh’s “Fall and Expulsion from Paradise” (1415)

[Speak/show]

In the Brothers Limbaugh’s depiction of “The Fall and Expulsion From Paradise” (1415), a serpent with a human face passes the fruit of the tree of knowledge to a curious Eve, What happens is that Eve, and then Adam, gain access to this troubling knowledge, their world changes around them . . . They are unceremoniously moved on by a rather forbidding scarlet and ushered firmly through an imposing gateway, a threshold into a different kind of space.

Author Number One

[Speak] Things are interrupted here for a moment’s quiet, an opportunity for reflecting on spectral voices within the narrative or the machines within the performances, or disappointments, memories, wounds or fate . . .

Author Number Two

[Speak] Take 60 seconds . . .

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Iron beds, neat rows and pink, lilac, and gray walls

Author Number Two

[Speak] Soon I am transported inside a large room filled with twelve cast iron beds, all lined up in neat rows against a wall on each side. Hallway light filters through the opened doorway onto the concrete floor. In the semidarkness, children stir and rise from their beds. They watch in curious fascination as the nuns toss me onto the nearest empty bed. They pin my arms and legs against the mattress. One of them proceeds to undress me as I struggle to get off the bed, feeling helpless and violated. In my rage, I manage to break free my right arm, grab hold of a nun’s veil, and rip it off. The shock and horror on her face turns to rage and suddenly I feel the sting on my legs, the violence stunning me into silence, the eyes of the nun glaring at me with venom. Once more, strong arms forcibly hold me down. I lie motionless as the nuns undress me, starting with my shoes and socks and working their way to my pants, jumper, and shirt. I lie on my back, limp, naked, and defeated, knowing only pain and humiliation. Turning my head, I stare at the boys sitting up in their beds in their pajamas. They watch me with curious indifference, their hair neatly combed and shining from wash. The dormitory is color-coordinated in pink, lilac, and gray. Within a few minutes, I am in pajamas for the first time.

Author Number Two

[Speak] Inside my new bed, I cover myself while the sisters leave the room closing the dormitory door behind them and shutting out light. I turn over to my right and stare into the darkness. A ray of skylight filters through a gap in the curtains. The sky changes colors, going from orange to red. Some of the boys roll back and forth in their beds, thumb in mouth. I wait for sleep, wanting to blunt the deepening sense of loneliness. Shadows dart around the curtains like phantoms as the sky closes in on me. Soon I am enveloped in darkness and wonder if I will ever wake up again and see my family. Frightened at the thought of dying, I pull my covers over my head and peer out from under the blanket. I am utterly lost in another world, away from my family for the first time in my life. I stare into the dark and weep. No crying, just lonely, sorrowful tears rolling down my cheeks. Tears drip down toward my mouth, and as teardrops flow and flow, I shiver with longing for home.

Curator Number Two: Francis Bacon’s “Lying Figure” No. 3 (1959)

[Speak/show]

Francis Bacon’s “Lying Figure” No. 3, 1959, shows an almost naked figure in an interior that describes the fact that the man is lying but not how; tense and contorted as if his position was the result of a fall. The deformation and violation of the form is seen in the flesh falling off the bone deformed, contorted by spasms or metamorphosing into a tissue of nerves. Deleuze sees Bacon’s work as elemental simplicity, a desire to sleep, to turn to . . .

Author Number One

[Speak] Things are interrupted here for a moment’s quiet, an opportunity for reflecting on spectral voices within the narrative or the machines within the performances, or disappointments, wounds, memories or fate . . .

Author Number Two

[Speak] Take 60 seconds . . .

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak/show]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Running, playing, prying eyes

Author Number One

[Speak] “Where are we going?” I am signing to “Patrick” on a mild October Saturday morning. The sky is overcast with occasional sunshine bursting through clouds. The cold and crisp air brushes against my cheeks. We are standing in the middle of the queue, hidden out of sight of the prying eyes of authorities. I am probably seven or eight years of age. All of us children are of similar age dressed casually in jumpers and overcoats with a small rucksacks sitting snugly on our back side. Standing in line, two abreast, we wait for the signal to move forward. Patrick glances nervously behind him before raising his hand to sign. “I am happy that we are going to walk around near the trees” he says. “Yes,” I respond. “We can play with leaves on the ground.” “We can run around and hide. Let’s play catch.” “Yes,” I say my eyes widening with excitement. Suddenly all heads turn around. Instinctively, I stand on my toes and peer over shoulders. At the far end the queue, a towering figure looms over a red-haired boy. The “teacher” is holding the limp hand of the young boy. In her other hand is a large tree branch. As I hold my breath, she administers three lashes on the small hand. The distress on the boy’s face causes me to stagger backward. As soon as I steady myself, I turn unable to control my curiosity. I freeze at the sight of the woman’s thinned lips and slanted mouth, the eyes glaring with anger. I take gulps of air inside me and stare at her contorted face feeling the pulse surge through my body. My heart quickens apace. The boy picks himself up off the ground and holds his hand under his armpit. Tears are streaming down his face. Unable to watch any longer, I turn round quickly and face Patrick. Patrick signs with deliberate ease, making sure not to stir his shoulder. “She saw Joe signing.”

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak/show]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Heading home with a car full of boys

At nine years of age, I am sitting in the front passenger seat of my father’s car. On my right my father is staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel as we turn out of the school gateway onto the streets of Dublin. As we journey under dark clouds, three nine-year-old boys from school are in the back seat behind me. Everything seems gray on a Friday evening in February. The rain has been light so far as we head home for the weekend. The plan is to meet the boys’ parents in another town where they will be collected. As part of a car pool arrangement with my father, the parents wait until we arrive and take them home.

The All and One Chorus

[Speak/gesture with wings]

hands swirling, swooping, rolling, darting

gathering, like starlings in full flight

rippling around perched faces

the stare at the window

like any feathered thing

singing quavers, breves, refrains

as only the caged bird sings

and . . . and . . . and . . . fate

omnes at singulatum

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak/show]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Windscreen wipers, school stories, outburst

Author Number Two

[Speak] My father squints through the beads of rain on the windscreen. With his hands resting on the steering wheel, he seems oblivious to the boys signing in the back seat. When one of them taps my shoulder, I turn half a circle and kneel on the seat. I lay my arms on top of the seat and rest my chin on my arms and watch the boys sign stories about school. “Did you see the Virginians today?” Paul signs excitedly imitating the man in the black leather waist-coat. The Virginian was a star in our eyes and the focal point in our signed stories on a wet Friday evening. “I saw it,” I sign back conscious that my father had been throwing glances my way. I have been aware of his hostility toward sign language for some time but cannot find a way to stop signing. One Friday evening on our way home, I incurred my father’s wrath for signing to the boys. Mouthing words in implacable anger, he pleaded with me to stop. “Why can’t you speak to them?” Not wishing to get into an argument, I shrugged my shoulders and allowed it pass without protest. Turning back to the boys, my eyes met Stephen’s. “What did he say?” he asked. “He wants us to stop signing. He said we must speak . . .”

The Intertitle Ensemble

[Speak/show]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Winding roads, signing, Jesus! Stop!

Author Number One

[Speak] When the boys glanced at each other, they wore disbelieving looks on their faces and shame washed over me. As he drives on zigzag on the narrow winding country road, buckets of rain pour out of the sky. Looking out through the dripping back window, I see fuzziness of passing hedges. We sign and share football stories for some time until I receive a persistent tap on my left leg. I turn to see the side of my father’s face. Keeping his eyes on the road, he mouths words to me. “Stop!” I pay no heed to his furtive warnings and turn back to the boys. Paul looks at me quizzically. “What is wrong?” I sign, “He said stop signing.” Before long my father pulls up to the side road and turns toward me. Instinctively, I turn around and face the windscreen. The fury in his face frightens me and I recoil in shock. My father says something about why in the name of Jesus could I not stop signing and I attempt a meek apology, mouthing sorry, but he does not see or hear me. As rain lash against the windscreen, tension fills the air. Time seems to stretch out before us. I make up m my mind not to sign again for the rest of the journey. It is as good as guaranteed. So we drive on through winding country roads. As the boys sign stories, I sit with my back turned to them subdued in my own misery.

Curator Number Three: Louis le Brocquy’s “A Family” (1952)

[Speak/show]

In Louis le Brocquy’s oil on canvas titled “A Family” which created a storm of pictorial invective when it was first exhibited in the Dublin Municipal Gallery in 1952. The mother lying on a table, leaning on one arm, stares out with quiet dignity while a menacing looking cat peers out from beneath the draw sheet. In the background the father sits, head bowed, in a pose suggesting total dejection. He appears to be oblivious to the small child, holding a bunch of flowers, a symbol of hope. The three somberly painted figures inhabit a gray, concrete bunker, lit by a bare bulb. The scene is disturbingly bleak and shows the nature of individual isolation and the breakdown of societal norms.

Author Number One

[Speak] Things are interrupted here for a moment’s quiet, an opportunity for reflecting on spectral voices within the narrative or the machines within the performances, or disappointments, wounds, memories or fate . . .

Author Number Two

[Speak] Take 60 seconds . . .

Author Number Two

[Speak] We signed behind [our teacher’s] back but one of us got caught. She got very cross and told us to stop signing. She used a stick to slap me on the hand. It was very sore. I was shocked. She said this was to teach us not to sign. When we went back to the classroom she tried to stop us signing and hit a few of the girls. Some of the girls received punishment from her. Everyone started getting nervous. Punishment for signing was common. After the summer holidays in 1951 everything had changed. The girls were divided into groups. Those who could not speak were transferred to a room upstairs. The room was for girls who were called “deaf and dumb.”

Author Number One

[Speak] As Yvonne observes, the “deaf and dumb” were separated and sequestered away from the main school building and given the official category of “oral failures,” both for their inability to adapt to spoken or oral/auditory instructions and for their reliance on signing. Meanwhile, Frank and Martin also testify to the changes that occurred in their school.

Author Number Two

[Speak] I remember it clearly. It was in 1971 when it happened. There was a new house built opposite the infirmary house on the side of the main St. Joseph’s School building. When asked why they were separated and sequestered from the main school, Frank and Martin spoke to the circulating and debilitating rumor that they were a “bad influence” because they could “not talk.” They were picked because they could not talk. Instead they signed. I watched them all move out of the line and stand with the group. Three of them were my classmates. The manual school boys went to the main building to collect their books and bring them to the new building. I watched them come out of the building with their books and stuff and walk down the yard to the new house.

Author Number One

[Speak] Participants who were told by their teachers to “stop signing” began to develop discourses of resistance not by choice but rather because they were unable to abandon their language. For these children, there was no alternative. Resistance for them, in turn, led to chastisement by the school authorities who began to use punishment as a way to control their behavior. By way of examples, Ned received slaps with keys on the hands, Niamh was forced to hand over a sum of her pocket money, and Anna was reduced to tears after being physically beaten with a leather strap and humiliated in front of her classmates.

Author Number Two

[Speak] In this performative ethnography, we have considered hands swirling, swooping, rolling, darting, gathering, like starlings in full flight, singing tunes without words, rippling around perched faces, traveling outward, for eighty years, like any feathered thing.

Cixous and Calle-Gruber: Authors

[Speak] In this performative ethnography, more specifically, we have considered the necessary and ethical conviction that “all stories tell one story in place of another story” (Cixous & Calle-Gruber, 1997, p. 178).

Narrator Number Two

[Speak] What makes this story so special is that it not only tells but also shows children’s collective solidarity, care, and love (O’Connell & Deegan, 2014). This kind of biographical or collective solidarity compares with othering practices that often accompany “official” accounts of children. More than a story about a “regime of terror,” however, this is a story about social justice and democratic practices of love, care, and solidarity and, more specifically, its presences and absences, structured by different places, other voices, other rooms . . .

Author Number One/Author Number Two

[Speak]

The All and One Chorus

[Speak/gesture with wings]

hands swirling, swooping, rolling, darting

gathering, like starlings in full flight

rippling around perched faces

the stare at the window

like any feathered thing

singing quavers, breves, refrains

as only the caged bird sings

and . . . and . . . and . . . fate

omnes at singulatum

Author Number One

[Speak] And like Tami Spry, mindful of Dwight Conquergood’s (1991) evocation to listen with the “ethnography of the ears and heart” (p. 37), we also begin to hear Homi Bhabha’s (2009, p. iv) exhortation to hear spectral voices.

Author Number Two

[Speak] [And] it these voices, frightened . . . half-scripted, half-intuited, half heart, half imagined . . . frightened with unresolved conversations and interrupted arguments, that finally help you “hold” the thought: and in the midst of that movement of ideas and intuitions you discover a momentary stillness. This moment of reflection is never simply the mirror of your making, your frame of thinking, but a stillness sometimes heard in choral music when several voices hold the same note for a moment—omnes at singulatum—as it soars beyond any semblance of sameness (Bhabha, 2009, p. iv).