Within the DeafBlind community of Seattle, Washington, in the 2010s, a protactile movement arose. This movement pushed for direct communication between DeafBlind individuals through tactile American Sign Language rather than mediated conversation through sighted interpreters, and privileged tactile interaction with one’s environment rather than a reliance on interpreters’ visual descriptions. In Going Tactile, Terra Edwards explores the sociopolitical context and day-by-day interactions surrounding this ideological shift. Based in thirty months of ethnographic research, the book argues that language alone is insufficient in meaningfully constructing individuals as participants in the world.

The politics surrounding the protactile movement are explored in chapters 2 and 4. Edwards traces the movement to specific organizers who viewed themselves as predominantly ‘tactile’ as opposed to ‘tunnel-visioned’; that is, they relied on tactile forms of communication, rather than accommodating for a limited field of vision. Once tactile persons engaged directly with other tactile persons rather than conforming to sighted expectations, protactile ways of being could truly emerge.

The ‘limits of language’ are explored deeply in chapter 3, which follows how Deaf individuals losing their eyesight increasingly rely on interpreters to not only communicate with others but also to provide a sighted perspective on the world around them. Ultimately, such indirect, heavily mediated access to others and to the material facts of the world proves increasingly isolating and alienating.

To explain this alienation, Edwards argues that ‘just “being here” is already a semiotic problem before any propositional content has been introduced’ (15). Problems arise when interpreters try to convey a predominantly sighted way of ‘being here’ that does not correlate with DeafBlind experiences. Chapter 5’s proposal of ‘being for speaking’ highlights how becoming protactile therefore involves not only a change in linguistic systems but also a reorientation in how one navigates and exists within space. This chapter focuses on deictic reference as one way that speakers co-constitute themselves as individuals and their environments. As Edwards demonstrates, parsing deictic references from protactile speakers requires inhabiting a protactile world.

The penultimate chapter 7 crosses the United States to Gallaudet University. Edwards focuses on the design of physical space and how the Deaf considerations for Gallaudet architecture either assist or discourage DeafBlind engagement. Edwards explains how different forms of engagement with the same environment—the vibrations of the floor, the spacing of seating, or the width of a sidewalk—may be ‘laminated’, such that a space can be made welcoming and inviting for persons of all sorts of sensory capabilities.

Going Tactile is a highly accessible book, as Edwards clearly explains the theories she draws from and provides an engaging, grounded perspective on her ethnographic site. Her audience explicitly includes DeafBlind people themselves as well as interpreters and educators. This book can therefore directly impact the lives of the communities under examination by speaking to the benefits of protactile perspectives. Scholars seeking a detailed analysis of protactile grammatical systems and turn-by-turn conversational rhythms will be best served by reading this book in conjunction with Edwards’ publications elsewhere.