Deaf Identity Revisited 127
I sometimes felt that I had lost myself through my oral educational back-
ground and failures in advanced education. I have become part of the deaf
community, yes, but I had to advocate for it, because I had grown up orally
and deaf community members who had grown up together saw me as some-
one with an oral background, an outsider. So I decided to leave and travel
for a few months, to think about what I wanted. I also socialized with inter-
national deaf people. We had insightful conversations, and I realized that
I do not need to “prove” that I am deaf. I have a deaf identity, and they need
to accept me as I am; there is no need for me to think about how they are
looking at me. So when I came back, I was stronger. Then there was a nice
coincidence: I went to the Deaflympics in Germany, and my friends noticed
that I had totally changed. This was me. I felt so good, freer, stronger, and
much richer in experience. When there are problems now, I say, “You don’t
know my story.”
I am continuing my studies and am now in distance education and doing
my internship in a deaf school. Unfortunately, the course program does not
seem to know very much about deaf people. There is hardly any personal
contact. I am really stuck now, in my mid-twenties without a degree. I have an-
other two years here, far from my parents. I would love to support myself, but
I am financially dependent. I know darned well that I am intelligent enough
with valuable knowledge and skills, but I need papers to prove it. Sometimes
I want to forget it and just quit, but what would my future be?
I really love my internship with deaf children, and they look up to me.
I have also met a hearing parent who was happy to see me as an example of
a deaf adult, a role model. When she watched me signing with her daughter,
there was emotion in her face: she could see that deaf people can grow up
happily and work successfully. I really want to do something for the future
of deaf children. I think emotional well-being is an important factor, with
children being mainstreamed and feeling at a loss. We could deal with this
differently in the future. It doesn’t matter whether children have a cochlear
implant; they are still deaf.As suggested by the juxtaposition of this articulate young woman’s initial silence
and her ultimate offering of this poignant and personal account, “silence” in Flem-
ish Deaf Parliament seems to be paradoxical. Indeed, as illustrated by the title of
the two-minute video, Deaf Parliament: Flemish Deaf People Speak Out (VisualBox,
2013),* the project recalls dominant practices of democracy and political repre-
sentation through “spoken” debate, although in a signed mode. Deaf citizenship
also seemed to appeal to this rhetorical tradition and to be articulated through
“voice” (for further discussion on vocal metaphors and citizenship, see Hoegaerts &
De Clerck, in press). However, this young woman gathered the strength to tell her
story starting from silence, participating through observation and positioning her-
self between spaces of available deaf identity constructs to open up possibilities and*Available on http://www.signlanguageprojects.com/en.