Beyond the Border. Seeing the Deaf, Hearing the Blind
Marco Mazzeo
The article is based on three fundamental points. The first briefly illustrates the social role traditionally assumed by blind people (often in individual terms) and deaf people (often in collective terms). The second illustrates the two dominant theories about disability: the social model and the biomedical model. As we shall see, the traditional figure of the deaf person seems particularly suited to the former, while that of the blind person seems particularly suited to the latter. In the third and final paragraph, we will attempt to highlight the flaws common to both approaches (removal of confrontation with limitations and with personality restructuring). To overcome these flaws, a different notion will be proposed, that of a «frontier», in order to construct a paradigm that makes the deaf-blind person a common reference point for the blind and sighted, the deaf and hearing.
Keywords
Biomedical model, Social model, Sacks, Deafblindness, Vygotsky.
