Biopower, Biosociality, and Community Formation: How Biopower Is Constitutive of the Deaf Community

Abstract

Key thinkers within Deaf Studies (e.g., Lane 1992 and Ladd 2003) have utilized the work of Michel Foucault on biopower in order to critically examine the ways in which the Hearing community oppresses the Deaf community through medical, audiological, social service, and educational institutions. In this article I argue that biopower is not just oppressive but that it is actually productive as well and creates the conditions of possibility for the formation of the Deaf community. I use recent anthropological works on biopower and community formation in order to make this argument and I situate the emergence of the Deaf community within the current neo-liberal political, economic, and social moment.