Abstract:
In the face of the International Congress of Education for the Deaf, occurred in Milan, 141 years ago, a challenge is placed to us: to reexamine its documental corpus. Acknowledging Milan as a ‘place of memory’, as in the sense of Pierre Nora (1993), our goal is to reflect upon in what ways this congress lacks reexaminations which dare to discuss the event beyond the simple opposition between oralism and sign language. Considering the complexity of its official texts, it was of pivotal importance for us to propose a reexamination of this ‘document-monument’, taking into account its specific context in relation to the education of the deaf. Our intention was to problematize in what ways, in Brazil, there is a recurrent narrative of this congress as well as the saturation of that memory in order for us to suggest other views to help us escape reductionist readings of the very historic movement of the deaf fights. As a result, we bring forth unknown sources of Milan, such as three reports of Corriere Della Sera dated from the end of the nineteenth century and other unknown records which allow us to revisit and research other memories of this important congress for the history of the education of the deaf.
Keywords:
education of the deaf; history; place of memory; sign language