"Finally, shared understanding of the human body was also a conspicuous and basic part of the understanding displayed by both mother and daughter. Each understood in a tacit way the resources and limitations of the human body as a medium or locus for experience and practice (see Polhemus 1974). Both mother and daughter depended upon attributes of that body as assumed resources in their projects with each other. These attributes and bodily functions included visual and auditory perception (although Bianca's were degraded), emotions and their facial display, paralinguistic properties of voice (relied upon heavily by parents in speaking to, praising, or castigating Bianca), touch (used as both reward or punishment), and gesturing (pointing, reaching, grabbing, deflecting). These were parts of what the human body allowed parent and child to share about each other's actions. In short, Bianca and her mother shared enough of the same world as conspecific that they could understand that world commonly. They participated together in a species-specific 'effector and receptor world' . . . "
from pg.79 of "A World Without Words: the social construction of children born deaf and blind" by David Goode
-- concerning children born during the Rubella Syndrome epidemic of the 1960s
No comments:
Post a Comment