Deaf Sport: combat your misunderstanding. A space of play and struggle for recognition

Abstract

The Deaf Sport, structured on the basis of the Deaflympics is one of the most guarded historical and cultural heritage by the Deaf communities. This protection, from external perspectives, has been subject to misunderstandings and accusations of separatism and self-exclusion. Fighting this dehumanizing misunderstanding, in this work he describes the world of meanings built from the Deaf Sport, recovering the word of his defenders. To do this, first, I reconstruct a series of confusions regarding the assimilation of the sport of the Deaf Sport to the world of Paralympic sport. Likewise, I contextualize how, before the irruption of the principle of inclusion, reconfigurations in games segregated by disabilities that challenged the validity of the Deaflympic were established in the last three decades. Second, starting from some surgical epistemological problems in an ongoing qualitative investigation, I expose the need to break with hearing ethnocentrism to understand the Deaf Sport and contemplate it in the history of resistance of Deaf communities. Third, systematizing a series of texts that rescue this point of view, reveal the historical and current senses that favor the validity of the Deaf Sport. They are mainly associated to constitute a space for play and struggle for the recognition of Deaf communities.