Negotiating Deaf Bodies and Corporeal Experiences: The Cybernetic Deaf Subject

Thomas Horejes,Christopher Heuer

doi:10.3390/soc3020170

Abstract

Deaf people negotiate their embodiment through corporeal experiences to provide a perception of what it means to be human. Some deaf people search for a framework where being deaf is human, not a disability. Other deaf people experience their deafness as a disability and use technology as a means to negotiate their embodiment and experiences. The role of technology or cybernetics, particularly cochlear implants, for the deaf will be examined as a way to understand cultural identities and diverse ideological perspectives concerning what it means to be deaf and normal. Then, this paper focuses on social constructed ‘bodies’ for the deaf using embodied theory and action as a part of a theoretical framework to showcase theoretical ideas and actualities of some deaf people’s lives and experiences. These discussions are ways to open dialogues and collaborative inquiries on larger important issues such as what it means to be deaf and, in essence, human.

Highlights

The politics pertaining to deaf embodiment begin with the inclusion or lack of technology in deaf people’s lives
There has been an explosion of Cyborg Studies and these themes have extended into the realm of deaf lives and their embodied experiences through technology including cochlear implants [4,5,6,7]
Some view the cochlear implant as representative of: the dawn of a heroic victory of nature and the advent of a self-generated superhuman...[o]thers have decried our alienation from nature as a nihilistic and dangerous fantasy of autonomy and control—a dream of escaping death which amounts to a rejection of life or rejection of deaf culture ([46], p. 40)

Summary

Introduction

The politics pertaining to deaf embodiment begin with the inclusion or lack of technology in deaf people’s lives. While forms of cybernetics for the deaf such as cochlear implants are not yet technically capable of delivering “more sound fidelity than the nervous system can handle” [8] deaf people who experience these variations of sound become embodied, and this in turn, shapes their perception of themselves Their embodiment has an impact on whether they will continue to be perceived as disabled, arriving at an ‘almost normal’ human state, or transcend and re-define humanity as a cyborg. The cyborg experience begins with the socially constructed omission (disembodiment) of a human feature of the body [10], using cybernetic technology to either replace their hearing loss with sound, to become cyborg/Homo Faber, or to supersede their humanity and become superhuman. While the distinction between what is superhuman and what is cybernetic does not yet appear to play a major role in the embodiment experiences of deaf cochlear implant users, the uses of cybernetics to come as close to normal hearing as possible certainly do. The implications of technology play a complex role in constructing deaf embodiment

The Evolving Role of Technology for the Deaf Embodied Subject

Glimpse of Deaf Embodiment from Two Cochlear-Implanted Subjects

Discussion

Conclusions