How sound is experiences in deaf/Deaf practice? On sound emancipatory strategies

Abstract

The paper aims to answer how deaf/Deaf practice inferred the sound. The author analyses the Reddit discussion on deaf experiences with sound. Using Steven Feld’s concept of acoustemology, which is one’s sonic way of knowing and being in the world, the author discusses the meaning of sound in the deaf/Deaf epistemological experience. The sound is a pharmacon. For the deaf/Deaf, the sound brings both positive and negative, expected and unexpected. Ernesto Laclau’s term of emancipation is used to explain how d/Deaf sound practices entail this ambiguity. The author describes four sound emancipatory strategies: expect unexpected, sound management, fabrication of sound, and semiosis. The deafness condition breaks down the perfect ideas of sound and silence, placing us in the sound continuum. Sound is perceivable, but the significance it brings is sometimes debatable. Sound emancipatory strategies enable d/Deaf people to tell their own story of experiencing sound, take control over the sound and show their expertise on it, free their hearing process, and break speech hegemony.