[Xmca-l] Further Reflections on Imagination

[Larry Purss]

I am posting a note from an article co-written by David Bakhurst and Carol
Padden, which I have accessed from the WIKI on the history of XMCA. The
article is "The Meshcheryakov Experiment: Soviet Work on the Education of
Blind-Deaf Children.
The article is fascinating [especially read in the context of the Wiki]
 and the current discussion on Nicaraguan sign language.
However, the quote I'm presenting is drawing attention to the role of
*imagination*
The note concludes with the observation that the blind-deaf individual's
conception of the world is NOT qualitatively distinct from that of sighted
and hearing persons in virtue of its RELIANCE ON THE IMAGINATION.  The
article elaborates this position

1 See Suvorov (1983 (trans. 1983-I), 1988) and Sirotkin (1979). (Note that
the translation of Suvorov 1983,

which is devoted to the concept of imagination, is eccentric. Throughout,
the Russian “voobruzzhenie” is

translated not as “imagination” but as “representation”. Although this
helps convey the richness of the

Russian word not shared by its usual English equivalent, it obscures an
important polemical point. One of

Surovov’s aims is to argue that the formation of any image or
representation of reality involves the creative

exercise of imagination, and hence that the blind-deaf individual’s
conception of the world is not *qualitatively*

distinct from that of the sighted and hearing person in virtue of its
reliance on the imagination.
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