The Cochlear Implant as an Epistemic Thing

Abstract

This chapter examines the translations and (de)stabilizations of the cochlear implant, a subcutaneous prosthesis that is subject to ethical and judicial controversies. By looking at medical, social, and scientific contexts, the CI will be described as a technical object ascribed with certain attributes providing technical stability in those contexts that treat it and practice it as a scientific fact, a “technical thing.” Scientific communities stabilize technical things by rigorously excluding attributes of the “social.” However, the CI is designed to enable participation, to “gap” the supposed “disability” of not being able to hear, attributing a certain instability to it. The chapter will theoretically and methodologically approach such processes of (de)stabilization and transformation by making use of ANT and Hans-Jörg Rheinbergers concept of technical and epistemic things. This will be illustrated by analyzing certain discourses used as illustrations for the successful communication between implanted children and their parents in practical guides for parents with deaf children.