The Cocklear Implant as a Backbone Technology - A study of Testimonies

Abstract

Although it has been on the market for several decades, researchers have not yet depleted the stock of public and academic controversies about the cochlear implant. Thanks to the spontaneous testimonials delivered on the internet and the social networks, one learns that beyond the physical effects it can provoke, the implantation of a "bionic ear" also have significant psychological and social repercussions. Indeed, by studying these digital testimonies entrusted by those concerned with this technological tool, this thesis aims at understanding how does the cochlear implant contrib ute to the creation via the Internet of communities aimed at supporting deaf patients. Conducted from a Science and Technology Studies perspective, the discourse analysis enables to examine the arguments of the groups formed around the cochlear implant. By doing so, this study clearly demonstrates that cochlear implantation represents an extremely disturbing cosmopolitical event, that is, an event that unbuttons the existence and acts as a pivot that projects individuals onto new life trajectories. The dist urbances suffered are incommensurable. Originally grouped under the aegis of the "deaf hard of hearing", most people affected by the diverse effects of the implant are experiencing an unanticipated change of identity. Via the Internet, they are regrouping under the new titles of "deaf implanted" or "resistant", each with its own rhetoric. These observations lead to the conclusion that, by its very existence, the cochlear implant creates a schism between the individuals while being at the origin of the emerg ence of unprecedented communities based on modified identities.