The Spectre of Abnormality: Deaf Education and the Poetics of Contestation at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Sabine Arnaud (1)

1 CAK-CRHST - Centre Alexandre Koyré - Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques

While retracing the scope of the French Republican project promoting speech in Deaf education, this article will analyze how the spread of oralism coincided with the development of new categories to classify children, especially “backward” and “abnormal.” It will examine the responses by Deaf people, who, far from being mere spectators of the change, developed a radical analysis of the repercussions of the newly implemented pedagogical methods, with irony, sarcasm, and critical analysis. This article will show how these years of struggle were also years of emancipation, insofar as the acquisition of language became a poetical and political act.

Mots clés: French Third Republic; psychiatry; abnormal; deafness; Nineteenth-Century France

Domaines: Histoire; Education

Sabine Arnaud. The Spectre of Abnormality: Deaf Education and the Poetics of Contestation at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. History Workshop Journal, 2021, 92, pp.106-129. ⟨10.1093/hwj/dbaa031⟩. ⟨hal-03087265⟩