Helen Keller Project

Synopsis

Helen Keller is an American woman, placed outside the norm from the age of nineteen months when she became deaf and blind and unable to speak due to an illness. She went on to become a global celebrity as the first deaf and blind person to obtain a university degree in 1904. Her life was fixed in the collective memory as an example of self-improvement and most of her writings were retained as simple motivational aphorisms. It is thus necessary to illuminate and re-stage her heterodox commitment to equality and social justice in order to make her words resonate today. Perhaps Helen Keller’s main disadvantage was not her loss of sight and hearing, but her belonging to a society designed for those who can see and hear, in which the marginal, the anomalous, the dissident, have little place. Like any exemplary person who challenges the hegemonic order, Helen Keller posed a threat to the powerful.

Director’s Note

This project was born following the discovery of the texts and political thoughts of Helen Keller, who in the early twentieth century took a critical and radical stance against the interventionist policies of the USA and military capitalism. Her example allows us to critically examine a new war in Europe between rival imperialist visions of the world.

Helen Keller is an American woman, placed outside the norm from the age of nineteen months when she became deaf and blind and unable to speak due to an illness. She went on to become a global celebrity as the first deaf and blind person to obtain a university degree in 1904. Her life was fixed in the collective memory as an example of self-improvement and most of her writings were retained as simple motivational aphorisms. It is thus necessary to illuminate and re-stage her heterodox commitment to equality and social justice in order to make her words resonate today. Perhaps Helen Keller’s main disadvantage was not her loss of sight and hearing, but her belonging to a society designed for those who can see and hear, in which the marginal, the anomalous, the dissident, have little place. Like any exemplary person who challenges the hegemonic order, Helen Keller posed a threat to the powerful.

This is therefore a project about rebellion and dissidence and against silence. About rebellious and dissident women who broke their silence. Helen Keller’s radical thinking and the critical dimension of her life are also an example of rebellion against the so-called American miracle. An example of anti-capitalist dissidence, challenging the logic of the miracle by taking the side of the most vulnerable against war and exploitation, militating in socialist and revolutionary organisations in a country that made the struggle against communism a raison d’être.

But this is also a work about language, which seeks to question the lack of communication between hearing and non-hearing people, between “normal” and “different” people, integrating spoken language and sign language in the same work.

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