Miejskie epidemie głuchoty – brzmienie nowoczesnośc
Urban Epidemics of Hearing Loss: The Sound of Modernity

Summary/Abstract: Tracing the history of the phrase “epidemic of hearing loss,” Zdrodowska identifies two aspects of the moral panic related to deafness: blaming the epidemic on the noisy urban environment and pointing to particularly vulnerable groups, i.e. children, individuals with health conditions and intellectuals. Urban noise is considered to be an ambivalent phenomenon – it is the scourge of big cities of the nineteenth and twentieth century and at the same time it is an indicator for a modern Western lifestyle. The use of the term “epidemic” activates a medical discourse around the urban threats to hearing – the city is examined and diagnosed; it is perceived not only as an acoustically dangerous environment, but also as a patient consumed by a major disease.

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