Deaf Ethnicity, Deafhood, and their Relations

Several scholars have asked what are the relations between two recently developed concepts, Deaf ethnicity and Deafhood. The emergence of these concepts, along with others such as ‘audism’, ‘dysconscious audism’, ‘Sign Language Peoples’ and ‘Deaf Gain’ reflects important attempts by Deaf communities and their allies to redefine Deaf peoples, their cultures and their languages. As part of the same process, starting in the 1990s, older concepts, such as ‘People of the Eye’, have been presented anew and externally-generated concepts such as post-colonialism have been brought to bear.
Similar processes of redefining identity can be found amongst other minority groups, such as African-Americans, women, gays and lesbians and disabled people, all of whom have felt the need to escape the reductionist lens of definitions created by oppressors, developing instead conceptualizations that assist with the liberation of their communities. ‘Deaf ethnicity’ and ‘Deafhood’ are two such conceptualizations. We start by explaining ‘Deaf ethnicity’ and ‘Deafhood’, and then we address their relations.