Habilitation beyond the Bionic Metaphor
Producing Deafnesses of the Future
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5362038 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lloyd (0000-0001-6099-376X, Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada, corresponding author), Chani Bonventre (0000-0002-4507-0489, Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 336-363 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01622439231183215 |
| PMID | 40109381 |
| OpenAlex | W4381890281 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
In this article, we travel back to the early days of experimental use of cochlear implants (CIs) in the 1970s, when unsettled expectations of the device and broad investigations of its effects began to settle and center on speech outcomes. We describe how this attention to speech outcomes coalesced into specific understandings of what CIs do, and how implicit or explicit understandings of CIs as bionic devices that normalize hearing influenced research on and expectations of CIs into the present. We conclude that accumulated evidence about what is known and unknown about experiences and materialities with CIs calls for a decisive break from the metaphor of the bionic ear. This shift would create a space to reconsider the "deafness of history and the present," as well as experiences of brain-computer interfaces that are inclusive of nonnormative life. This article is based on fieldwork in research and clinical facilities in Australia, Canada, and the United States. It included forty-three interviews with clinical experts and leading researchers in the fields of audiology, psychoacoustics, and neuroscience, among them scientists involved in the development and commercialization of one of the first CIs
Art · Commercialization · Habilitation · Linguistics · Metaphor · Perception · Political science · Psychoacoustics · Sociology · Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation · Law · Multisensory perception and integration · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Psychology · Tactile and Sensory Interactions
The Human Enhancement Debate and Disability
Made to Hear
Audism
Framing Sign Language as a Health Need in Canadian and International Policy
Sound and Fury; Or, Much Ado about Nothing? Cochlear Implants in Historical Perspective
Synesthetizing Sound Studies and the Sociology of Technology
The Rhetoric and Counter-Rhetoric of a "Bionic" Technology
The postconventional body
Antibiotic Resistance and the Biology of History
No hearing without signals
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women
From Hoping to Expecting
Parents of deaf children with cochlear implants
What it is to see
When the Artificial Is Natural
Pursuit of a 'Normal Life
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |