Deaf people's quest for self-definition and self-determination has tended to take one of two divergent paths each embracing vastly different and often conflicting conceptualizations of deafness and disability and their relationships to contemporary socio-cultural and political contexts. Because fragmentation works against collective empowerment and effective political challenges to oppression, there is a great need to identify a common discourse which all deaf and disabled people can share without compromising fundamental beliefs and values. This book is the first to use a multidisciplinary, postmodernist approach in the search for an inclusive framework for understanding deafness and disability, which aims to liberate the political potential of socio-cultural diversity and develop our thinking about disability as a form of social oppression. In using this approach, it exposes the essentialism inherent in existing social, political and service frameworks which confuse issues of needs and rights and contribute to the creation and reinforcement of the power imbalances at the heart of disability oppression.