C’est tombé dans l’oreille d’une Sourde : la sourditude par la bande dessignée

It Fell on Deaf Ears. Deafhood by Graphic Signed Novel (C’est tombé dans l’oreille d’une Sourde. La sourditude par la bande dessignée) is a research-creation project consisting of a doctoral essay and a bilingual graphic signed novel in Québec sign language (LSQ) and in French, produced from excerpts of encounters with Deaf people and with members of my hearing family that have been carried out as part of the thesis. Through an exploratory process, the project seeks to document and to reflect upon what it means to live as a Deaf person, about Deafhood as becoming, about hearingness as a concept that can be used to think about certain power relations, as well as about the communicative, technological and media issues that arise from deafian epistemological perspectives. From the assumption that oppression is experienced through often well-intentioned everyday practices (Young, 1990), and from an interest in dealing with the requirement of multiplicity (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980), was developed the broad question of the thesis: while positioning it as a complex becoming, how can the singular experience of Deafhood, its affects and effects, be conceived, actualized and communicated? This question is posed through its articulation with the site where it takes shape, namely the creation of a doctoral essay and a graphic signed novel, the process of which serves as an exploratory site for various philosophical, theoretical, epistemological, ethical, artistic and political questions, which, in turn, feed the process. Using video as a form of writing that is able to account for the three-dimensionality of sign languages and of their linguistic components, the graphic signed novel is produced as video chapters distributed on a website. Produced in black and white, it features videos of protagonists signing in LSQ edited with a cartoon effect, French text inscribed in speech bubbles, and backgrounds that have been edited with graphic design software. The production team and the project are presented in LSQ, ASL, French and English on the website www.BDLSQ.net. Written in the form of a dissertation, the essay includes five chapters. In summary, the introduction presents the research-creation project, the research question and the different parts of the essay. Chapter 1, titled “The Possibilities of Deafhood”, brings together elements that help us understand Deafhood in its complexity, problematizes and historicizes Deafhood as a process, becoming and belonging, theorizes various dimensions of oppression, questions the subjective experience as a site of knowledge, and provides a critical analysis of the concept of Deafhood. Chapter 2, titled “Trajectory of Research-Creation”, revolves around the process of making a bilingual graphic signed novel; documenting my research-creation approach, and questioning my epistemological stance through the paradox of wanting to make “Deaf voices heard”. The chapter further discusses issues raised by videographed writing, is interested in the entanglements of film and Deafhood from various angles, and identifies some questions related to the place of the graphic signed novel in relation to the confines of the codes of literature, film and the graphic novel. Chapter 3, titled “The Creation of the Graphic Signed Novel”, focuses more specifically on the various production stages of the graphic signed novel. It addresses the meetings held with five Deafs and four members of my hearing family, documents the production and postproduction processes of the graphic signed novel while raising some issues related to translation and editing, analyzes, in a critical way, the internet as a distribution platform, and introduces the website www.BDLSQ.net. The conclusion, titled “Some Challenges Posed by Deafhood”, offers some reflections stemming from the meetings, interrogates the question of technologies through the notions of Deafhood and disability, proposes a reflection on agency afforded through digital media, and ends by raising some political and ethical issues related to the development of Deaf studies and perspectives. Keywords : Deafhood, graphic novel, digital art, signed litterature, video, transmedia, Deaf Studies, Critical Disability Studies, intersectionality, audism, Quebec Sign Language.

Keyphrases: sourditude, transmedia, Deafhood, graphic novel, digital art, signed litterature, video, transmedia, Deaf Studies