Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Not A Hearing Loss, A Deaf Gain: Power, Self-Naming, And The Deaf Community, David J. Thomas

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

Self-naming has long stood as the primary assertion of power for disenfranchised communities in the western world. While person first language (e.g. person who is deaf) has been the preferred language of disability and disability services for the last 20 years, members of the Deaf community have asserted their cultural capital, and indeed, their Deafhood, or defining the experience of being ‘deaf in the world’, through the power of self-naming. This research examines attitudes toward language, self-naming, and disability in the Deaf community and seeks to move toward a more attentive, sensitive, and responsive language policy in the academy.

Historically, …

Cultural Identity, Deafness And Sign Language: A Postcolonial Approach, Steven Loughran

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks describes the experience of the recently de-colonized members of the Negro (as he refers to those of African descent) population living in Europe, particularly France, in the 1960s. A little over a decade later, Edward Said published Orientalism, thus adding to a growing discipline of scholarship in the fields of art, literature, and cultural studies called “Postcolonialism.” My essay attempts to show that Deaf persons who communicate with each other using sign language can be viewed as a colonized group, and that applying postcolonial theory to the study of their culture is appropriate.