Drawing upon materials from project DoT (Delaktighet och Teater; Participation and Theatre) and the think tank DoIT (Delaktighet och Inkluderings tankesmedja; Participation and Inclusionary think tank), this paper aims to explore the nature of belongings, i.e., being human being, in contexts that are flagged as democratic one-society-for-all settings. The curiosity-driven work of theoretical assumptions and doing scholarship from non-mainstream multiple epistemologies in this paper is accomplished through the confluence of the creative dimensions of the performing arts sector and calls for undisciplinary i.e., out-of-the-box thinking within the scholarly enterprise. With the aim of illuminating prerequisites for participation for-all in education, culture and society more broadly, and drawing traction from a loose translation of the Swedish term “mixerbord” i.e., the mixer-table, this paper explores participation in terms of the normality of “mixed” abilities or mix(t)able that marks the human condition. It argues that imaginaries of inclusion and integration build on the taken-for-granted stratification and fixatedness of people’s belongings that in themselves unwittingly curtail and dis/en-able people’s participation in societal arenas. A focus on the banality of participation, rather than on the ideological framings of inclusion or integration that policies and institutional work commonly build on, draws attention to the many-ways-of-being within the matrix of intersectional-complexities, opening for understandings of human beings as always being mix(t)abled, both as individuals and collectives across timespaces. Here the banality of who is positioned by whom, with what aims and purposes, how marginalities are envisaged as being alleviated, and being human being constitutes key issues.

Building upon long-term collaborations, this paper aims to explicate a going beyond agenda by illuminating the entanglements of policies and practices with a focus on discourses related to participation, communication and being human in a democratic society in the 21st century. It builds upon work that we have jointly led, first in the Swedish Arts Council project DoT (Delaktighet och Teater/Participation and Theater) between 2012-2015, and since then in the Think-Tank DoIT (Delaktighet och Inkluderings Tankesmedja/Participation and Inclusion Think-Tank). Bringing together knowledge regimes from the sectors of research and higher education on the one hand and the performing arts on the other hand, this collaborative work has raised important insights related to discourses regarding equity and participation inSwedish democratic spaces where an education-for-all and a culture-for-all are important policy goals.

Building upon tools developed at the intersections of the two sectors that we represent, project DoT built concretely upon meetings (between people and between sectors) as a fundamental strategy for change in societal arenas. It aimed to contribute towards a more equal and democratic society in the 21st century. Through collaboration and exchange, research and documentation, DoT engaged the performing arts, the infrastructure of cultural politics, and researchers. Its intention was to generate multidimensional stories that revealed and potentially (re)created understandings regarding the complexity of human existence. Going beyond the long-standing binary of medical-linguistic models related to deaf children and adults, DoT focused on making visible the deaf-hearing collaborative nature of the Deaf-Hearing World (Bagga-Gupta 2017, 2020). It asked what enables leaving the binary mainstream and moving towards re-positioning all people in a third, multidimensional space that constitutes contemporary society (Weckström & Bagga-Gupta 2020). For the performing arts, such a query meant shifting from dichotomizing discourses and spaces that attempt to include marginalized groups (for instance deaf people) in the majority culture, towards multidimensional perspectives that open up for new cultural expressions, potentially accessible for all.

Drawing upon ethnographic data from two sub-projects in DoT and the annual cultural-policies of Örebro County, Sweden between 2012-2020, this paper describes a third position related to participation and communication by focusing on people’s ways of being in and across policies and practices. It problematizes the audiology-framed identity positions of being hearing or deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) with the intention of unpacking the socialization processes that position people as being “normal” and “disabled”; such a stance also highlights societal norms regarding rights and privileges for accessing interpreters in order to communicate. The primary data includes recordings of what in contemporary parlance is understood as “in the wild” and that Lincoln and Guba called “Naturalistic Inquiry” (1985). Thus, “natural” in situ data, including digital sites and written documents, are focused upon. The study aligns itself with SWaSP (Second Wave of Southern Perspectives) tenets that emerge at the intersections of decolonial or Southern epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies on the one hand, and presuppositions related to sociocultural integrational perspectives on communication on the other hand. It focuses on the social dimensions of collaborations that play out in people’s lives and the nature of what is and can be meant by the label’s language and identity. The study thus illuminates what is called language and identity by engaging in empirical explorations that illustrate them in terms of what they are, where they reside, when and why they emerge in and across the contexts of policy and praxis.

A third position requires an explicit acknowledgment that humans live in dynamic, complex contexts where all individuals are potential members across settings. It challenges the performing arts on the one hand and research on the other hand, where invisible, taken for granted norms and praxis shape routine ways of working, (dis)enabling a shift towards alternative ways of understandings. Thus, for instance, a third position calls attention to issues of authenticity and the need for leaving behind unidimensional “categorization panic” in the performing arts when institutions are called upon to handle working with identity representations of being lesbian, black, wheelchair users or being deaf. A third position also illuminates the importance of and the ways in which interpretation services in relation to Swedish–STS (Swedish Sign Language) shape institutional discourses related to rights and responsibilities on the one hand, and hearing and DHH individuals’ experiences and participation on the other hand.

The findings presented in the paper point to tensions in the discourses of a one-society-for-all that facilitate or obstruct DHH individuals’ participation and their possibilities to be citizens on an equal footing with hearing people in relation to access, rights and responsibilities. In line with results from parallel projects where other societal sectors are focused upon, the findings highlight that the discourses in policy position DHH individuals as being handicapped in the context of performing arts. Unequal power relationships position them in passive roles, as handicapped, albeit with major responsibilities and curtailed opportunities to shape their own access and participation including rights and responsibilities.

The findings trouble mainstream Global North discourses in terms of webs of understandings that reproduce norms and bounded nomenclature, thus enabling the exploration of alternative possibilities that emerge in a third position with regards to language and identity. A third position does not adjust deviance to mainstream binary norms with regards to inclusion-exclusion, but pushes norms beyond what is considered as deviance, in language as well as everyday life, policy action plans and what is possible to measure and tabulate. Accepting diversity as a normal part of societal arenas poses challenges to current solutions for fulfilling the Swedish vision of a society for all, where all citizens across the country are seen as having equal opportunities for participating in a rich and diverse cultural life.

References

Bagga-Gupta, S. (2019). Identity Positioning and Languaging in Deaf-Hearing Worlds: Some insights from studies of segregated and mainstream educational settings. In Leigh, Irene & O’Brien, Catherine (Eds.). Deaf Identities. Exploring new frontiers. (162-192). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190887599.003.0008

Bagga-Gupta, S. (2017) Signed Languages in Bilingual Education. In: S. May (General Ed), Encyclopedia of Language and Education. O. García and A. M.Y. Lin (eds) Volume 5: Bilingual and Multilingual Education. (131-145). Rotterdam: Springer. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-02258-1_12

Lincoln, Y. & Guba, E. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park: Sage.

Weckström, P. & Bagga-Gupta, S. (2020). On going beyond dichotomies towards 3rd positions. Some theoretical and pragmatic implications with regards to culture-for-all and a society-for-all. In Bagga-Gupta, S. & Weckström, P. (Eds.) On 3rd positions in democratic contexts. An education-for-all, culture-for-all and a society-for-all. Research Report (in English and Swedish), Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication. Nr 11. ISBN-nr: 978-91-88339-22-5. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-48145

Drawing upon ethnographical, primarily “in the wild” data from different projects within the performing arts sector, and the annual cultural-policies of Örebro County, Sweden between 2012-2020, this paper aims to describe a third position related to participation and learning by focusing on people’s ways-of-being in and across policies and practices. It problematizes the audiology framed identity positions of being hearing or deaf and hard-of-hearing with the intention of unpacking socialization processes that frame people into positions of “normal” and “disabled”. Thus, “natural” praxis in situ pertaining to the projects, including digital sites and written documents are focused upon. The study aligns itself with tenets that are framed in terms of Southern epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies, on the one hand, and presuppositions within sociocultural perspectives on learning and communication, on the other hand. It focuses on the social dimensions of collaborations that play out in peoples’ lives and the nature of what is and can be meant by the label’s language and identity. The findings highlight the importance of and the ways in which interpretation services shape institutional discourses, and peoples’ experiences and participation across contexts. The findings point to tensions that facilitate/obstruct individuals’ participation and their learning and possibilities to be citizens on an equal footing in relation to access, rights and responsibilities for all citizens. Unequal power relationships position deaf individuals in passive roles, albeit with major responsibilities and curtailed opportunities to shape their own participation including rights and responsibilities. 

This article focuses on the access that human beings have to the performing arts in contemporary Sweden by taking a point of departure in project DoT (Delaktighet och Teater; English: Participation and Theatre) in which we – the authors and the institutions we are situated within – collaborated between 2012 – 2015. A key issue we raise concerns the direction we see theatre and dance develop, and who (or what) guides such development. DoT ran underthe auspices of (i) Örebro county theatre, (ii) The Swedish National TouringTheatre and the (iii) research group CCD, Communication, Culture and Diversity (previously at Örebro University, Sweden and since 2016 at Jönköping University, Sweden). Project DoT was supported by the national Kulturrådet (English: The Swedish Arts Council). Based upon Sweden’s national cultural policy goal that every citizen should have access to professional performing arts, one of DoTs primary goals, was to focus upon and involve a highly marginalized group in the context of theater i.e. users of Swedish Sign Language, STS (Svenskt TeckenSpråk) in the multiple roles of audience, co-creators and initiators of cultural projects. A broad support in Sweden for such a goal is based on the idea that a society-for-all includes culture-for-all. Örebro county theatre operates as part of such a cultural political system. Issues regarding diversity and culture, including linguistic heterogeneity and identity-positionings (gender, functionality, ethnicity etc.) from a critical social, humanistic perspective is focused within the CCD research group (see www.ju.se/ccd). Furthermore, CCD has unique competencies in the domain of DS, Deaf Studies. Its DS focus was a pioneering effort in Scandinavia in the 1990s and constitutes one of its strong area of research expertise internationally. Within the framework of the regional development project DoT, our common interests allowed us to go beyond the binary divisions that the deaf professional as well as academic fields are marked by in Sweden (and internationally). 

In this article we discuss the salient challenges we encountered during our work in project DoT and particularly highlight how changing the parameters of the meeting places and conditions for participation allowed for fostering the development of new forms of cultural expression and performativity. Here issues related to identity and language became relevant for many people – deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing in ways that were unexpected and complex. We illustrate the challenges that we faced during this highly stimulating joint journey and, in so doing, contribute to a conversation with regards to the strengths and weaknesses of the politics of culture and the politics of equity in the nation-state of Sweden. Issues regarding (i) gender, transgender identity or expression, (ii) ethnic affiliation, (iii) religion or other systems of belief, (iv) human beings’ differences and similarities on a continuum of functionality, (v) sexual orientation or (vi) age – became salient for the work we developed across the three-year period within DoT. These issues constitute fundamental dimensions framed within Swedish law and policies that it has given rise to regarding equity and discrimination. The article introduces how we continue this focus within the Think-Tank DoIT, Delaktighet och Inkluderings Tankesmedja (English: Participation and Inclusion Think Tank) that was initiated in early 2016.