VIRUS Band 11, pp. 093-101, 2020/07/23
Schwerpunkt: Behinderung(en)
In the mid-19th century so-called “deaf-mute-clubs” began to emerge across Germany.Towards the beginning of the 20th century they had developed into a national andtransnational infrastructure of clubs, associations, congresses, and press. However, thiswas not simply a formalised expression of the deaf in Germany, but a movement of avery specific and limited group of deaf people. The ‘deaf elite’ tried to divert prejudiceand obtain a somewhat more priveliged position by actively distancing themselvesfrom certain other deaf. Thus, a complex landscape of power relations emerged,consisting not only of the oppression and exclusion of the deaf by the hearing, butalso, within the deaf movement, the construction of the excluding concept of the‘respectable deaf-mute’.
Keywords: Disability History, Deaf History, Deaf Community, Deaf Movement, Disability Rights Movement, Processes of Exclusion, Peddlers, Social Model of Disability, Public Sphere
