Seeing Voices

Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf is a 1989 science book by English psychologist and neurologist Oliver Sacks. A broad survey of deaf studies, Sacks’s book weaves together knowledge about the neurology of deafness, the history of deaf populations, and the obstacles deaf people have surmounted in areas including language acquisition, sociology, and law. Sacks also recounts his experience watching the 1988 Deaf President Now protest conducted by students at Gallaudet University, the world’s sole liberal arts college for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. While Sacks’s other work tends to focus on individual narratives, Seeing Voices is concerned with deaf populations and how they have organized to advocate for their recognition and well-being.

At the beginning of Seeing Voices, Sacks admits that he is a total outsider to the experience of deafness. He has also never actively participated in deaf culture as an ally. However, rather than render him unqualified to talk about deafness, he thinks it makes him a more impartial and objective thinker about the parts of deaf culture he observes, including the Deaf President Now protest. Sacks’s mission for his book is to debunk scientific myths about deafness, including the myth that deaf people cannot learn and employ language as well as people who can hear. He also hopes to highlight the stories of exceptional deaf researchers and activists, drawing from his personal observations.

A foremost researcher of language acquisition, Sacks understands from scientific and narrative perspectives many of the different ways that people become and adapt to deafness. Though some deaf people are born deaf, various other life events – from a bacterial infection to a sports injury – can render a person unexpectedly deaf. Sacks subscribes to the Critical Age Theory, which posits that all humans must acquire some language faculties, be they verbal or nonverbal, before a certain age. Most adopters of this theory believe that the so-called “critical age” is puberty. Given this finding, Sacks argues that sign language should be readily available for all deaf children. If deaf children are deprived of this basic language tool, they are not able to think and express healthfully for the rest of their lives. Sacks criticizes the government for not doing enough to promote sign language, arguing that many deaf people are emotionally and intellectually stunted as a result.



Sacks also talks about important figures in the history of deaf culture and deaf studies. One of these people is Laurent Clerc, a French teacher who became known as “The Apostle of the Deaf in America.” Clerc founded a school for deaf people that today remains the oldest surviving school of its kind. Clerc was the protégé of Massoud, a figure who receives little historical attention but whose work and activism deeply informed the future of deaf studies.

Finally, Sacks presents his recollection and analysis of the Deaf President Now rally at Gallaudet University in 1988. The protest staged a simulation of a presidential election, in which three “finalists” took the stage. Two of the three candidates were deaf, and despite their merits, the crowd chose the hearing candidate. The event was a commentary on society’s normalization of anti-deaf rhetoric and policy, and its tendency to favor people who are not deaf or otherwise impaired over people who are impaired but are just as qualified, if not more. Sacks was deeply moved by this event, which for him, synthesized different prevailing ideologies about biology, culture, and the science of communication. The event even compelled Sacks to learn sign language.

Seeing Voices contains numerous insights about the nature of language and its acquisition by humans. Sacks adds a necessary scientific voice to the movement calling for sign language to become a more universal language, and for it to be actively taught to deaf youth. With science and experience as his primary tools, Sacks humanizes deafness and makes its intricacies understandable to wide audiences.