Eugenics and Utopia: Social Imaginaries of Technologies for Deafness

Abstract

A community where everyone speaks Sign? A society where familial deafness1 condemns people to sterilisation or death? A world where sign languages are suppressed? All have been historically documented: Martha's Vineyard from 17th-20th centuries; Germany in the 1930s-40s; internationally, for a century from 1880. These and other images comprise divergent social imaginaries which are the context for current and future technologies for deafness. These technologies include postnatal genetic and aural testing for deafness, and may in future include prenatal testing. Cochlear implants can enable profoundly deaf people to hear and newborn hearing screening has recently been introduced in New Zealand. Sign language is another technology whereby deaf people can communicate, create poetry and drama and tell jokes; yet its fortunes have fluctuated over time with oralism's dominance. Our article draws on two small ethnographic studies in Auckland: one with two families with hereditary deafness; the other with two families and one young adult who had recently chosen cochlear implants, to suggest that individual and societal moral reasoning on the contested issues of technologies for deafness is embedded in different social imaginaries of normalcy.

Reproduction, ethics and heritable deafness: three South Island families express their views.

“…By seeking to ground abstracted ethical arguments against lived experience (an approach also suggested by ), our work forms one component of a larger Marsden1 funded project that explores everyday ethical thinking around reproductive decision making for genetic difference. Best et al (2013) presents further findings from an associated parallel study to this that ran concurrently in the North Island of New Zealand. Taken together, these two projects contribute to the further elucidation of a New Zealand style of engagement with genetic technologies (see also Scott and Du Plessis [2007], Fitzgerald [2008], Du Plessis and Fairburn-Dunlop [2009]).…”

“…Family B also had an easy acceptance of the normality of deafness which in their case had arrived as something of a surprise for a family in which apart from their youngest child, all other members were hearing. As noted in Best et al (2013), this is a far more representative experience of how the majority of people encounter heritable deafness. This family used nZSl for primary communication with their youngest child and the normality of D/deafness was underscored by recognising it as membership within a different language and culture group -an experience to be respected and embraced.…”