Deaf Identity Revisited 141
overlap in the stories of deaf migrants. The fact that these sensitive stories were
shared in public inspires hope and illustrates the confidence and dynamism within
the community.THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLEMISH DEAF COMMUNITY:
EXPLORING SUSTAINABLE AND COLORFUL FUTURES
IN AN ONGOING EMANCIPATION PROCESS
This section expands on the concluding thoughts of Chapter 2 regarding how
notions of deaf culture and identity have been employed as political tools that have
fueled emancipation but have also increasingly been challenged by calls for inclu-
sion. To contribute to this discussion, the following paragraphs tackle the question
of how deaf identity and culture are exploited “as complex and dynamic notions
that create room for and are created by diverse and contextualized practices of deaf
people and that also have emancipatory potential” (De Clerck, 2012d, p. 35; also
see Chapter 2).
Through exploring diverse and contextualized practices of deaf parenthood
and citizenship in Flanders, this section illuminates the handling of “competing
affiliations” of identity (Sen, 2007; also see Chapter 8) and the complexities and
paradoxes of “double discursive competence” (Baumann, 1999), which combines
a rhetoric of unitary identity constructs with reasoning and freedom of choice in
practice (Sen, 2007; also see Chapter 8).
The documentary I Am a Human Being, Too, which presents stories from differ-
ent generations, provides a sketch of an ongoing emancipation process. These “re-
lational narratives” (Cavarero, 2000) illuminate how community members create
their identities along the lines of their times, weaving through community networks
and resources, with encounters on the knots of the web. The documentary presents
stories of awakening but also weaves these into narratives of the past and future, pro-
viding different perspectives. I include extracts from the documentary here, namely
two deaf parents’ stories of having a deaf child, which reveal the choices available to
them, and the changes in their decision making over time. Firstly, Andy and Tibo,
father and son, talk at their home beside the fire:Tibo: I am 8 years old. I am going to a hearing school and I am in Mrs. Sarah’s
class. The children at school don’t know Flemish Sign Language, but I do.
Andy: Tibo has been mainstreamed because of my own experiences at the deaf
school. The educational level was very low, and I wasted my time. I didn’t want
him to go through the same thing.
Tibo: I have a lot of hearing friends, and my parents are both deaf, with many deaf
friends. But their children either know only a little sign language or none at all.
Andy: Tibo and my [deaf] daughter, Lotte, play with each other and with other
deaf children of different ages. He would like to play with deaf children his
own age, but we meet so few of them. That’s a pity. We went to a meeting