Abstract
The article deals with surdotiflopedagogika, a doctrine of special education for deaf–blind–mute children as it was developed in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. In the spirit of social constructivism of the early Stalinist society, surdotiflopedagogika presents itself as a technology for the manufacture of socially useful human beings out of handicapped children with sight and hearing impairments, “half-animals, half-plants”. Surdotiflopedagogika’s institutionalization and rationale as these were evolving under the special patronage of Maxim Gorkij are analysed. Its experimental aspect is also discussed. Exploring and implementing the most advanced ideas in the technology of communication, surdotiflopedagogika sought to compensate for the loss of speech, hearing, and sight by supplying the child with mechanical and human prostheses, including other people (assistants), technical devices, techniques of the body, and multiple communication codes to be translated from one into another. In the case of Soviet deaf-blind education, the Soviet subject appears as a technologically enhanced, collectively shared, and extended body in a permanent process of translation, internal as well as external. Technologies of language and acculturation that are of particular interest. Surdotiflopedagogika’s method as it appears in the theoretical writing of Ivan Afanasjevič Sokoljanskij (1889–1960), the teacher of the legendary deaf-blind author and educator Ol’ga Ivanovna Skorokhodova (1914?–1982) are given particular attention.
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Notes
The English-language edition of Lev Vygotsky’s The Fundamentals of Defectology translates defektologija as abnormal psychology and learning disabilities (Knox and Stevens 1993). Vygotsky included in its competence deafness, blindness, mental retardation, ‘difficult childhood’, and ‘moral insanity’ (Vygotsky 1993, pp. xi–xii).
According to Jarmolenko 1947, the need for deaf–blind education was first formulated by the Russian educators E. K. Gračeva and M. V. Bogdanov-Berezovskij who admitted the first documented case, a deaf–blind boy, to the St. Petersburg asylum for retarded children (Peterburgskij prijut dlja umstvenno-otstalykh detej) in 1905. In 1910, they established a philanthropic society for the support of deaf–blind children which was active until the revolution. In 1909, another deaf–blind education pioneer, M. A. Zakharova, first started the systematic education of deaf–blind children at the kindergarten for deaf–mute children that at that time was working at St. Petersburg. After the revolution, deaf–blind education was transferred to the Oto-Phonetic Institute (Oto-Foneticeskij institut) later transformed into the Institute of Hearing and Speech (Institut slukha i reči) (Jarmolenko 1947, pp. 16–17).
Some earlier initiatives in this area were undertaken at the department for training professionals working with disabled children (fakul'tet po podgotovke personala dlja vospitanija defektivnykh detej) which was established in 1918 as a part of the Institute of Preschool Education (Institut doškol'nogo vospitanija) in St. Petersburg. In 1920 the department was transformed into a separate Pedagogical Institute of the Social Education of Healthy and Disabled Children (Pedagogičeskij institut social'nogo vospitanija normal'nogo i defektivnogo rebenka, PISVNIDR). In the same year the 1st All-Russian Congress of the professionals working in the area of child disability took place in Moscow and the Moscow Institute of Child Disability (Institut Defektivnogo Rebenka) was founded. In 1924 the latter became a part of the pedagogical department of the 2nd MGU. For this information, I am deeply indebted to Katya Chown.
This information can be found in Skorokhodova’s letter to Stalin (Skorokhodova 1938). An incomplete version as preserved at the Russian State Archive for Literature and the Arts, RGALI, the Goffenšefer and Povolockaja collection 2585/1/116/63-73. I would like to thank RGALI for their cooperation.
Gorky refers to the Kharkov school-clinic for deaf–blind children, which was affiliated to the All-Ukrainian institute of experimental medicine in 1933. See Sokoljanskij’s biography in (Basilova 1989, pp. 4–19).
Space limitations compel me to omit a more detailed discussion of inter-textual connections between Gorky’s rhetoric and the earlier texts of materialist philosophy. Denis Diderot in his ‘Letter on the Blind’ (Diderot 1991 [1749], pp. 147–199) is equally fascinated by experiment in demonstrating blind thinking. A similar tone of enthusiasm for experiment sounds in the Baroque scholarship of sign languages (Dalgarno 2001 [1680], pp. 293–348)—an enthusiasm specific for this early discourse of technology and automatization in its speculative search for a universal language (of which sign language was believed to be a case.) Gorky’s sentiment is pride mixed with prejudice. In an earlier letter addressed to Sergeev-Censkij (Sergeev-Censkij 1967, p. 235), he describes deaf–muteness as ‘diabolic’ freakishness, ’unspeakable, indescribable, inaccessible either to Swift, or to Breugel, or to Bosch, or to any other fantastic artist.’ Deaf–mute language appears here as an exchange of obscene gestures, ‘figs’ (kukiši, the Russian gesture of denial, privation, and negativity). Cf. Aristotle’s understanding of blindness as the exemplification of the logical category of privation (negativity, eteresis).
Sokoljanskij’s expression which was often repeated by Skorokhodova herself.
Sokoljanskij’s notes are preserved at the Archive of the former Institute of Defectology, now the Institute of Corrective Pedagogy in Moscow, and at the Joint Archives of the Russian Academy of Education (which at the time of my research were situated in Gorki Leninskie). I am very grateful to the staff of both Archives for their help in my research.
On the political implications hidden in a language theory in general, and on cultural hegemony as a linguistic hegemony in the work of Antonio Gramsci, see (Ives 2004a). Given the similarity of political agendas in Gramsci and Soviet Marxist language theories (see also Alpatov 2005), Ives’ interpretation can be extended to include these latter discourses, including the peripheral discourse of surdotiflopedagogika. Ives further engages the Bakhtin circle in his conceptualization of hegemony and dialogism (Ives 2004b, pp. 97–133). Bakhtin’s linguo-philosophy has recently been discussed as a political and social philosophy and a theory of culture (Brandist and Tihanov 2000; Hirschkop and Shepherd 2001).
The performative aspect in the cognizing/expressive work of the hand was described by Avgusta Jarmolenko: ‘…a human hand is a unity of the act of perception and the act of reproduction—a property not found in any other sense organ’ (Jarmolenko 1947, p. 45).
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Archival Sources (in-text references to fond/opis/delo/list)
RGALI (Moscow): Rossijskij gosudarstvennyj arkhiv literatury i iskusstva f 2585, Goffenšefer and Povolockaja collection
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Tat’jana Aleksandrovna Basilova and Prof. Irina Vladimirovna Salomatina for their help in my research.
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Sandomirskaja, I. Skin to skin: language in the Soviet education of deaf–blind children, the 1920s and 1930s. Stud East Eur Thought 60, 321–337 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9064-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9064-9