John Lee Clark is pioneering an emerging language — and culture

In celebration of Disability Pride Month, throughout July MPR News is featuring stories about Minnesotans with disabilities who are making an impact. See more at mprnews.org/changemakers.

When John Lee Clark lost his vision in adolescence, his instinct was to touch everything around him. For DeafBlind people like him, he says, that’s the best way to learn about the world.

But he was often told not to. Clark says our culture is touch-averse; we operate at a distance from each other and our surroundings.

Now, Clark is part of a movement insisting on changing those norms. He advocates for Protactile, a set of practices and language based entirely on touch, designed by DeafBlind people.

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Developed in Seattle in 2007, Protactile language relies on touch-based signs given on a person’s arms, back, shoulders, and thighs. It fills gaps left by sign language: it allows one-on-one and group conversations between DeafBlind people without interpreters. Whereas sign language relies heavily on visual cues, like facial expressions, Protactile develops ways to communicate feelings and responses by touch.

Protactile operates on norms encouraging touch — a change from the distance enforced in the past for many DeafBlind people.

Clark writes about his experiences with Protactile in his works of poetry and essays. His poetry collection “How to Communicate” won the Minnesota Book Award in 2023. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and kids.

Clark spoke with MPR News reporter Estelle Timar-Wilcox. He opted to converse via email, as there are few Protactile interpreters and, he says, interpretations may not be exact. His answers are lightly edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe the Protactile movement?

Protactile involves new practices that revolve around touch, and there’s an emerging language — the first truly tactile language.

For the language, we make use of what’s called contact space. It is the listener’s body. In sign language, you use air space — you move your hands in the air to be seen. In the past, DeafBlind people had to try and decipher what the hands moving in the air were saying, and it was hard.

But Protactile, it’s 100 percent tactile. Like, instead of my right hand “petting” the back of my left hand to talk about petting my cat Nibby, in Protactile, I would prompt you to give me the back of your hand — here, it represents the cat — and your other hand is on my right hand, and with it I “pet” the back of your hand. All the while, you’ve also got your other hand following my right hand that is doing this.

It’s this huge, seismic shift, easily the most important event in DeafBlind history. It’s a movement where we overhaul inherited sighted norms.

What are those ‘sighted norms’ that you talk about? How do those get in your way?

If you’re DeafBlind, of course, you’re going to start touching things, groping around. You cannot help but start to do that, right? It’s natural.

But, historically, sighted people intervened. Teachers would slap our hands and tell us not to do that. That’s due to distantism — which is the way our society encourages us to stay apart, to stay at a distance.

One thing to understand — this is very, very important — is that Protactile has always been with us. It has always wriggled through a bit. When Protactile did emerge in a big way, it wasn’t a surprise, it wasn’t totally new for me. There were others ready for it, too. Like all those streams that feed into and add to the Mississippi River!

What’s an example of something in Protactile that makes it easier for you to move through the world?

There are so many things. One major thing is co-presence.

Like, to take a very basic, a mundane example: if we’re at the kitchen table, you’re typing on your laptop, I’m eating lunch, co-presence might mean that our knees are together. We know that the other person is there.

Protactile builds on this, and we have developed complex norms and habits. If I am moving around the kitchen table — I’m passing by you, you’re hard at work on your laptop — I’m going to say my Protactile name on your back as I pass you by.

You get the idea I’m going in that direction. You don’t need to do anything, you can keep on typing, or you may decide to say, “Hey John, are you going out? Can you check the mail when you come back? Thanks!”

Without Protactile, we may be at the kitchen table but not touching. It can be as if you’re not there at all.

Looking to the future, what are your biggest hopes for the Protactile movement and your Protactile community?

It may seem strange, but I never think about the future. Perhaps in part because it is here, it is in the unfolding. My mind is blown away every single day. We make discoveries all the time, we realize things all the time, things we never thought of or noticed before.

The way to go is to fumble. It’s a wonderful process. That’s all that matters to me, that we’re fumbling along, that we are mastering the art of fumbling.