DEAF-DEAF-DIFFERENT. ambiguities of being deaf in Benin

Deaf lives are shaped by individual and social biographies, access to social and educational infrastructures, and the kinds of deafness a person is born with or acquires. In Benin – as in many other parts of the global south where medical and geographic conditions foster illnesses that produce hearing loss – there is a higher incidence of deafness acquired in childhood and adolescence than in those regions that cradled DEAF-DEAF-SAME concepts like cultural Deafness and deaf similitude. Underlying these concepts is the assumption that the shared experience of being deaf is what defines deaf social life, wherever it exists. Challenging that assumption, this dissertation uses the case of Benin to argue that, in regions where there is greater deaf diversity, deaf communities and socialities are just as much constructed and negotiated around difference as they are around similitude. The multicultural, multiethnic, and multilinguistic setup of Beninese society constitutes a background of habitual diversity that both accommodates variation and enforces distinction. The social diversity of hearing Benin is reflected in the country’s deaf sociality. At the same time, deaf Beninese are entangled in local, regional, national, and transnational deaf belongings, discourses, and power relations. In putting deaf diversity center stage, this dissertation does not deny the role similitude plays in deaf sociality but uncovers the ambiguities and DEAF-DEAF-DIFFERENT complexities that tend to be overlooked in the homogenizing discourses and politics of similitude, identity, and community.