Deaf Identity Revisited 129
What is the meaning of Agnes saying “You don’t know my story” from a perspective
of deaf identity and emancipation? To gain a better understanding of this, I draw
on Arendt’s view of humanity and citizenship as inherently relational, plural, and
political, and Cavarero’s (2000) continuation of this stance in her theory of the
“ narratable self” and “desire for (telling) one’s story.” The first section of this chapter
introduces Braidotti’s (2011) theory of nomadic citizenship to look into Flemish deaf
community members’ narratives of identity transitions. This theoretical framework
enables me to pinpoint tensions in contemporary processes of deaf emancipation.
The first section also provides a nomadic reading of the process of awareness raising
or deaf awakening, as it comes to the fore in the story of Jerry, a participant in a
deaf awareness course in Flanders in the 1990s (this topic is described extensively
in Chapter 3). Consciousness raising implies the traveling of the mind, which is cap-
tured in the figure of the nomad. Minority identities “in transit” and “in transfor-
mation” may have to leave one fixed identity to claim another, which is what is hap-
pening in this phase of identity politics and awareness raising, when dominant and
majority concepts of deafness are eschewed in favor of politicized notions of deaf cul-
tural identities. Braidotti’s theory is useful since she takes into account that members
of the minority community may need to gain a sense of control over their subject po-
sitions, especially when moving away from embodied histories of power and oppres-
sion, before this position can move into a nomadic “becoming” (Braidotti, 2003).
The second section contextualizes this movement of consciousness raising, and
the mobilization of political and collective identities around sign language, deaf
culture, and deaf community in an overview of emancipation movements in north-
west Europe and the United States. From this overview, a three-stage cycle of eman-
cipation comes to the fore, with a deaf community that had withdrawn from society
during oralism, and then, in the wake of the civil rights movements of the 1960s,
began to claim an equal place in society. This on-going movement has contributed
to a broader use of sign language in different life spheres, and enabled individu-
als to freely move between the deaf world and other groups and communities, in a
third stage of emancipation.
Although the broader use of Flemish Sign Language in the different realms of life
and an equal position as a deaf citizen in a pluralist society are still to be advocated
for, shifts from the second to the third stage of emancipation in the lived experi-
ences of Flemish deaf citizens are manifest. This chapter aims to look into such
‘flights,’ as these trajectories are called in nomadic theory. These shifts are marked
by competing affiliations, which is a vital aspect of identity and inclusion in contem-
porary societies, as described in the section of this chapter titled “‘The Evolution
of the Flemish Deaf Community’.” I also argue in that section that emancipation is
related to how much room there is for citizens to develop identities of multiple be-
longing. This issue is illuminated with examples of “double discursiveness,” such as
combining a second stage community identity rhetoric with individual choices and
narratives that enable one to build individualized and inclusive practices in one’s
various settings (e.g., in making choices on biotechnology and education as a deaf
parent of a deaf child).
These processes of emancipation are occurring in a time of change and transition
within and beyond the deaf community. This is the topic of the section titled