Touch the Future

A Manifesto in Essays

By: John Lee Clark

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Paperback | 5 December 2024 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
208 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.0 x 14.0 x 1.5

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Born Deaf into an ASL-speaking family and blind by adolescence, John Lee Clark learned to embrace the possibilities of his tactile world. He is on the frontlines of the Protactile movement, which gave birth to an unprecedented language and way of life based on physical connection.

In a series of paradigm-shifting essays, Clark reports on seismic developments within the DeafBlind community and challenges the limitations of sighted and hearing norms. In "Against Access," he interrogates the prevailing advocacy for "accessibility" that re-creates a shadow of a hearing-sighted experience, and in "Tactile Art," he describes his relationship to visual art and breathtaking encounters with tactile sculpture. He offers a brief history of the term "DeafBlind," distills societal discrimination against DeafBlind people into "Distantism," sheds light on the riches of online community, and advocates for "Co-Navigation," a new way of exploring the world together without a traditional guide.

Touch the Future brims with passion, energy, humor, and imagination as Clark takes us by the hand and welcomes us into the exciting landscape of Protactile communication. A distinct language of taps, signs, and reciprocal contact, Protactile emerged from the inadequacies of ASL--a visual language even when pressed into someone's hand--with the power to upend centuries of DeafBlind isolation.

As warm and witty as he is radical and inspiring, Clark encourages us--disabled and non-disabled alike--to reject stigma and discover the ways we are connected. Touch the Future is a dynamic appeal to rethink the meanings of disability, access, language, and inclusivity, and to reach for a future we can create together.

Industry Reviews

"[A] lively, inviting collection.... [John Lee Clark is] able to draw sharp distinctions between different kinds of living, speaking fluently to those of us who experience the full use of our eyes and ears without thinking about it." -- Anna Heyward - The New York Times Book Review
"John Lee Clark writes against the grain with intellectual ferocity and dry wit; with linguistic playfulness and unsparing precision; and above all, with an expansive, curious, tireless compassion. Society may ignore and isolate DeafBlind people, but as Clark shows us again and again, it is the sighted and hearing world that is marginalized by its failure to understand DeafBlind life, and never the other way around." -- Andrew Leland, author of The Country of the Blind
"Touch the Future opens doors to the multiple worlds of disability...This is a book for anyone who is interested in the life of the imagination and the mind." -- Stephen Suusisto, author of Eavesdropping
"John Lee Clark's fervent manifesto for the Protactile language and movement will blow your mind, enliven your body, and connect you to other people in unexpected ways. Touch the Future is a book that enlarges the human world." -- Edward Hirsch, author of Stranger by Night

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