The Politics of Deafness

This volume embarks upon a post-modern examination of the search for identity in deafness and its relationship to the prevalent hearing culture that has marginalized deaf people. The book's aim is to disrupt "normal" thought about the popularly considered condition of deafness as a physical deficiency. Wide-ranging examples are used to go beyond disrupting conventional theorists for their interpretation of deafness as the lack of a sensory function. By calling attention to the different lingual potential created by the instant visual expression of cyberspace, the book explodes orthodox conceptualization of the nature of language as serially ordered and dependent upon sound. This work poses the relationship of the bodies physical and mental of deaf people as subject to a form of "colonialism" by the dominant hearing culture. It proceeds to expose and attack presumptions and practices that derive from and descend upon deaf bodies. Related analysis also addresses tensions little noted in the current literature on deafness and on the popular move to reconstitute deafness as a global culture. Through displacement of logistical anchors, ironic stances and disconcerting perspectives, the book practices a form of de-naturalization to demand space within and between the normalizing frames of daily lives. By doing so, it offers an insightful perspective on the meanings of deafness, the politics of deaf identify and what is costs to be "unusual".