| This dissertation is a study of contemporary deaf education that draws on autobiographical perspectives as a Deaf student, teacher, and researcher. It combines a counter-storytelling of years in public school with a (re)conceptualizing of memories shared by key informants such as family, friends, and mentors. The first part punctuates story-telling with analyses that draw heavily on Foucault and Althusser. Next, the dissertation includes a diversion reminiscent of the picaresque novel, as it introduces an interpolated story, a savagely critical reading of the plight of young children becoming cyborgized under the guise of humanization by cochlear implant stakeholders and schools, merging Cyborg ontology with Deaf epistemology to uncover the never-ending cycle of making the disability/deafness disappear. The narrative then continues, in the genre of a bildungsroman of Deafhood, the story of coming of age and coming out as a Deaf man, a story that emerged during the course of writing this project and how the autobiographer came to better understand how his own life history informs the scholar and storyteller he is today. |
