ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at how the experiences of deafness are contained, or not, within disability theory. There are several reasons why the particularities of deafness might be of interest to the academic understanding of disability in general. The chapter focuses on questions of deaf identities and identifications as they lie at the heart of disability theory’s difficulties with deafness. It argues that deafness and disability may better be examined in terms of phenotypic variation, rather than social structures or cultural identities. The Deaf cultural construction of deafness, not as impairment but as membership of a minority linguistic group, is a powerful one for deaf identity. Clearly, it also presents some difficulties for both the disability movement and disability theory. The chapter suggests that the crucial fissure between disability and Deaf culture is to do with the contested meaning of deafness and whether it should be seen as impairment, or as a neutral but identity-forming characteristic.