Deafness in the Brazilian care policy: a genealogical analysis

Deafness can be understood from the clinical-therapeutic and the socio-anthropological perspectives. The study aims to perform a genealogical analysis of deafness; that is, an analysis of the practices of knowledge and power in Brazilian health policy. This is a qualitative, documentary study based on the theoretical assumptions of Foucault. Researchers selected 23 documents and conducted eight semi-structured interviews, which were also considered documents, with a non-probabilistic sample using the snowball technique. The genealogical analysis showed that health policies aimed at people with hearing impairment result from the power and knowledge relationships in the field of deafness, in which the medical-pathological discourse is seen as the real perspective, understanding deafness as a disability to be corrected. The socio-anthropological approach, which recognizes the deaf through the perspective of difference and the use of sign language, is a subject discourse that has not found space in health policy. The study highlighted the contradictions between the achievements related to the access to technologies and the propositions of the health sector, whose policy directs its actions exclusively to reach a listening standard, disregarding the multiplicity of deaf individuals.