Spaces to defend the use of Tibetan languages have been shrinking in Tibetan areas, as officials busily pursue Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream”. State-led education fosters pervasive use of written, spoken and signed Chinese and in the process Tibetans and their languages are said to become ra ma lug (“neither goat nor sheep”). This talk foregrounds the experience of ra ma lug through an intimate, ethnographic portrayal of deaf Tibetans living in Lhasa city, through the lens of sign language, locally referred to as lakda, or handsigns. Beyond conceptualizations of loss, I show how young Tibetan signers defiantly occupy in-between spaces, thrive on and stitch together a new generation of being and of living, of writing and of signing, a creative, generative exciting new space.
Departmental Seminar Series Michaelmas Term 2025
3pm, Fridays of Weeks 1, 3-8.
In person in the Lecture Room, 64 Banbury Road.
Convened by Madeleine Reeves, Zuzanna Olszewska and Alice Millington
Week 2 is replaced by the Marett Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor Laura Bear
