ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a postulate about deaf-and-disabled ontologies, analyzed from a standpoint of ethics (axiology) and dissensus, to illustrate the plenitude of their hybrid corporealities. The first argument explores the dialectic tension between hearing-loss and deaf-gain, showing that they are not mutually exclusive. The second documents four proofs showing where disability-and-deafness coexist ontologically. The final argument illustrates fundamental errors concerning ontology in previous models of deafness and argues for a new biosocial paradigm to correct them. This argument also proposes that neglecting the phenomenology of the disabled body, including hearing-loss, in deaf experiences is as egregious an intellectual error for sociocultural theorists of deafness as the neglect of empirical evidence of deaf-gains, like the benefits of sign languages, by biomedical researchers. In sum, the chapter argues that all modes of being deaf are equally valid in terms of the ethics of the deaf-and-disabled body. Throughout the chapter, implications for theory and methodology are discussed, based on their grounding in an ethics constructed on deaf-centric axiological values.
