Paper Short Abstract:

In Understanding Deaf Culture (2003), Paddy Ladd compares Deaf oppression to colonialism, showing how both involve cultural and linguistic suppression, and instead raises a Deaf cultural view through the culturo-linguistic model. This paper examines how to conduct anthropological research on Deaf experiences while centering Deaf perspectives, challenging traditional hearing hegemony in academic approaches.

Paper Abstract:

In his book Understanding Deaf Culture (2003), key Deaf thinker Paddy Ladd draws an important parallel between colonisation and the past and present oppression of d/Deaf individuals, communities, and cultures. While the claim initially sounds controversial, Ladd lays down the background for the systematic and systemic subjugation of Deaf identities, language and culture in many parts of the world, similar to how colonial powers have suppressed indigenous cultures and languages.

Ladd challenges traditional medical views of deafness, which focuses on hearing loss as a condition to be fixed, and instead establishes the culturo-linguistic model. This model moves away from the audism, oralism, and medicalisation, and towards the idea of being Deaf as a cultural and linguistic experience. This understanding of audism, oralism, and the removal of Deaf cultures and languages worldwide through the lens of colonialism allows us to understand the world through a different, Deaf cultural perspective.

This paper discusses the researcher’s attempts of unwriting the audist hearing hegemony in their anthropological research into d/Deaf experiences with the Australian accessibility system. The centering of Deaf thought and Deaf culture remains at odds with the centrality of the hearing hegemony in academia and the limitations it places on the production of anthropological knowledge. This paper focuses on a reflexive look into methods of study, dissemination of knowledge and the negotiation between perpetuating audism and oralism and creating Deaf-led, Deaf culture centered research.