Body, language and movement: deafness as difference in adapted physical education

Abstract

This article reflects on the deaf body as a territory of language and difference within the field of Adapted Physical Education. Grounded in the Philosophy of Difference and in a critical perspective on language, the study questions prevailing notions of body, disability, and normality that shape pedagogical practices and discourses on inclusion. Deafness is understood not as sensory limitation or absence, but as a singular form of perception and meaning-making, capable of establishing new relations between movement, communication, and learning. The research follows a qualitative, interpretive, and critical approach, based on discursive analysis of academic works, educational documents, and pedagogical reports involving deaf students. The methodological path seeks to understand how bodily and visual language, mediated by Libras, reconfigures the meaning of movement and challenges adaptive logics present in Physical Education practices. The study concludes that recognizing the deaf body through the lens of difference implies shifting from adaptation to creation, conceiving movement as a space of invention, resistance, and the production of new corporeal epistemologies.