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Paper short abstract:

This paper argues for a rethinking of anthropological practice to incorporate an inclusive “voice” by exploring how visual media can be used to understand deaf communication and critique dominant methods and modes of representation, including those grounded in presuppositions of the hearing body.

Paper long abstract:

“Voice” as a verbal, or textual, mode of communication is a limiting concept for an inclusive anthropological practice as it fails to account for other ways of being and communicating. Specifically, this definition of “voice” fails to acknowledge the multiple, varied, ways human beings communicate and express themselves beyond spoken language - i.e. through touch, gesture, eye contact or through non-verbal [signed] languages. In this roundtable, I argue for a rethinking of anthropological practice to incorporate an inclusive “voice” that does not speak for, or represent, but is guided by our participants’ preferred modes of communication. Specifically, I explore how visual media can be used to understand deaf ways of communicating and critique dominant methods and modes of representation, including those grounded in presuppositions of the hearing body to the exclusion of other ways of being.

Through a co-creative methodology shaped by the visual, embodied, and performative features of deaf communication, my research uses visual media and play to investigate deaf children’s knowledges in practice and in relation to their own worldmaking. This process facilitates and reveals new ways of knowing, thinking, and communicating, including the development of a deaf-centred film grammar, which not only has applications for the innovation of deaf-centred curriculum activities but more generally in terms of the inherent possibilities of anthropological practice to acknowledge, rather than elide, other ways of being and “voicing”.