John Lee Clark is a DeafBlind poet, essayist, historian, translator, and an actor in the most thrilling development in DeafBlind history, the Protactile movement. He has published From Where I Stand; How to Communicate; and Touch the Future. For a more complete introduction, visit his website.
Abstract: In his 1929 extended proposition “The Function of Reason,” Alfred North Whitehead noted that animals, including humans, “have progressively undertaken the task of adapting the environment to themselves.” He gave this process of modification the term “attack,” which is driven by the desire to live. “In fact,” he elegantly but flatly stated, “the art of life is first to be alive, secondly to be alive in a satisfactory way, and thirdly to acquire an increase in satisfaction.” The Whiteheadian concept of attack is easy to misunderstand; most revisions made upon the environment are not frontal but rather intimate, proceeding at an angle and without forethought.
When the Protactile movement started in 2007, it was often taken as an illustration of “self-advocacy,” “social justice,” and “world-making.” Early Protactile discourse, then, can be forgiven for glossing in English one of its key concepts as “autonomy,” borrowing it from broader discussions. The original Protactile term, however, means something else. It may be transliterated as “inner fire,” and defined as “what you already possess.” Indeed, Protactile builds on what DeafBlind have always done automatically, which is to reach out to touch, but now there is a turn toward consistently finding openings to continue to touch. Those openings have led to the emergence of a new language in an unprecedented modality, along with the overhauling of sighted norms in favor of ones that suit us better.
Poet, essayist, historian, and Protactile educator John Lee Clark argues that this has been a very Whiteheadian process, powered by immanent forces more than any intentional maneuvers. Much has unfolded effortlessly, but much can also be easily stopped. The small and geographically scattered DeafBlind community cannot sustain frontal political action, and yet the whole ground for us continues to shift. How does such a poetics of attack work? In addition to critiquing “autonomy” while rescuing “inner fire,” Clark proposes to use poetry as a guide rope threading through this terrain—by sharing poems, discussing creative processes, and tracing the beginnings of Protactile poetry as an example of how Protactile in general has evolved.
