‘Bezubaan’ or ‘Humzubaan’: Problematizing Deaf Identities through a Select Few Hindi Films (original) (raw)
2024, Retrieving the Crip Outsider: Representations of Disability in Literature and Culture, Bloomsbury India
David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder elucidate on the oversimplified representation of deafness as an inability to talk and see deafness as a master trope of human disqualification. Deafness is a condition where a person has a hearing impairment that affects the basic human function of communication. The ableist hearing world creates a metanarrative of deficiency and inadequacy around deafness making deaf people unfit to take up societal roles and meet societal expectations. The chapter attempts to probe Deaf identities through a select few Hindi films, such as Koshish (1972), Khamoshi: The Musical (1996), and Black (2005). The chapter will examine the representation of deaf characters in these three films in their sheer materiality and not indulge in a metaphorical reading of deafness. The chapter will investigate the complex nature of deafness and whether it should be categorized as a disability or not in an audist world. It will further try to locate the significance of Deaf ontologies and Deaf epistemologies to understand Deaf bodies as linguistically diverse. Deaf ontologies lay importance on understanding and not-understanding in a deaf person’s life which a hearing person would usually take for granted. Communication becomes a major hindrance for a deaf person in a hearing world, therefore, Deaf sociality takes center stage for a deaf person making it an important aspect of Deaf identity. The chapter will explore the way Deaf sociality is rarely granted and often denied to the deaf characters in the films.
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