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Handsigns from Lhasa: an urban deafnography from Tibet
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.
Date:
14 November 2025, 15:00
Venue:
St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Nissan Lecture Theatre
Speaker:
Theresia Hofer (University of Bristol)
Organising department:
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography
Organisers:
Alice Millington (University of Oxford),
Zuzanna Olszewska (Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of the Middle East),
Madeleine Reeves (University of Oxford)
Part of:
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography Departmental Seminar Series
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Kate Atherton
