An Expanded Istifada: Cochlear Implants and Regulating Communication for Deaf Jordanians
Timothy Loh
Ingraham 206
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a hospital in Amman as part of a larger project on the politics of deafness, disability, and assistive technologies for deaf Jordanians, Loh examines a speech-centric ethos in therapeutic approaches for deaf children in Jordan who have been fitted with cochlear implants. This ethos is not only shaped materially by what people believe about disability and language but also by the linguistic ecology of Jordan and the broader Arabic-speaking region. Hearing technologies such as these were couched in the language of “benefit” (istifada), but what “benefits” deaf Jordanians accrued with such technologies was understood narrowly, primarily in terms of access to spoken language. Loh argues that these approaches draw on a narrow conception of language and communication that neglects its multimodal and distributed nature; belie specific language ideologies about the “proper” Arabic that deaf children should acquire; and rely on a utopic technological imaginary about the cochlear implant and other kinds of hearing technology. Taking a view from Jordan, this project sheds light on how the regulation of language and communication within medical spaces feeds into broader political projects to govern bodies and to produce modern subjectivities.
Timothy Y. Loh is an anthropologist of science and technology and a Cotsen Fellow in the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. At Princeton University, he is also an Associate Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities and a Lecturer in Anthropology. Bringing together medical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and science and technology studies, his ethnographic research examines sociality, language, and religion in deaf and signing worlds spanning Jordan, Singapore, and the United States. His first book project, provisionally entitled “Assistive Modernity: Deafness and Technology in Contemporary Jordan”, explores how “assistive” technologies for deaf people in Jordan, like cochlear implants and sign language-centered mobile applications, have shaped and continue to shape disability’s contours and manifestations in the Arabic-speaking Middle East/Southwest Asia and North Africa.