Bioethical discourses on deafness

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the overarching goal for hearing impaired children’s education in most western countries was the production and perception of speech. As the varying degrees of lacking hearing made this a challenging task, both deaf and hard-of-hearing children were normally assigned some sort of special needs education: Deaf children (who obviously had the greatest difficulties perceiving sounds) would mostly attend deaf schools. Hard-of-hearing children would either attend schools for the hard-of-hearing or mainstream schools with varying degrees of supporting adaptations (for example technical aids). This educational doctrine for normalisation that we today refer to as ‘oralism’ have several ethical implications: The governing idea for oralism was that of ‘habilitation’. In a certain respect, hearing impaired children’s way of existence was considered ‘unauthentic’; a state of being where some sort of correction was necessary in order for the children to enter an ‘authentic’ existence. Today, we can identify at least two ethically problematic aspects related to the ‘correctional processes’ imposed on hearing impaired children: First, the process itself demanded extra effort in terms of repetitive rehearsing, and we can question whether the ends – normalisation and development of speech – justify these employed means. Secondly, hearing impaired children often understood well that ‘their way of existence’ was considered an unauthentic one: The self-understanding of being an unauthentic “Other” – that is, a flawed hearing person – became a part of many hearing impaired peoples’ identity. This latter aspect concerning identity formation was barely recognised within the framework of oralism itself. For many Deaf people, the scientific recognition that sign languages are full-fledged languages was thus not only a linguistic discovery; it was the recognition of the authenticity of a Deaf identity and ‘Deafhood’(Ladd, 2003) as well. With new technological means to correct deafness or avoid having deaf children the bioethical discourses have centred around the deaf—Deaf dichotomy. Analysing some of these discourses conceptual weaknesses both in the concept of ‘deafness’ and ‘Deafness’ become apparent: Among other things, these two concepts are often treated as if they were ethically symmetrical. Further, many contributors to the discourses suggest that one of the two notions of d/Deafness is to be regarded as more ‘true’ in a mere ontological sense. I will argue that these latter attempts to settle once and for all whether d/Deaf people are deaf or Deaf are futile, but this doesn’t imply that the dichotomy is irrelevant. With reference to the above mentioned concept of authenticity I will argue that there is a considerable ethical asymmetry between these two ways of framing d/Deaf people’s lives. Reference List Ladd, P. (2003). Understanding Deaf Culture, In Search of Deafhood. Great Britain: Cromwell Press Ltd.