Governing the Deaf: The Educational Apparatus

Although contemporary political theory has recently develop an interest in the 'disabled' as an expression of its concern with difference and minorities, it has not paid enough attention to the heterogeneity of bodily experiences described under the label disabled that is uncritically applied to the deaf. With the help of contemporary deaf studies and social and political theory, the article interprets deafness as a social construct that is instantiated partly though oralism and its educational dispositive. The article analizes the educational dispositive of oralism that aims at determining the field of action and the production of subjectivity of the deaf according to the model of modern subject and democratic citizen. This model, based on oralism and audism, has oppressive effects of cultural imperialism and symbolic violence over the deaf population. In opposition to the educational biopolitical dispositive of oralism, the sociopolitical action of the Deaf has the potential of activating an affirmative biopolitics of the body and a politics of identity and recognition of Deaf culture.