Deaf Identity Revisited 147
- In this state of “not knowing,” Ingrid, the president of Tred, took a more ob-
serving stance, waiting to see what happens: “When deaf children are indeed
joining us, then our clubs will evolve over time. But we cannot know in ad-
vance whether this will happen because our clubs have continued to exist with
the same people. I know that there are other deaf children, but the question
is whether they will be coming. I just can’t say now.” - Hilde, a young member of the Ghent deaf club, GTG, brings up another fac-
tor of change: “Now deaf children can apply to have Flemish Sign Language
interpreters in regular education. Does this have consequences for our deaf
community in the future?”
This discussion, which opens the documentary, illuminates a wide range of
future perspectives that need to be situated in the various club settings. While
there is a common thread of uncertainty regarding whether young deaf people
will still participate in the community in the future, the clubs provide different
responses. Tred, with a predominantly middle-aged membership and only one
younger member, has not received any new young members for a while, even
though there are two deaf schools nearby. In the absence of older and younger
members, the club has become oriented toward middle-aged concerns, including
securing better services for elderly deaf people within the next 10 to 15 years.
This may be why the club has a “wait and see” response to the question of its
future continuation.
Other clubs such as Nowedo and Piramime provide contrasting perspectives.
Both clubs have a diverse membership with deaf children and youth initiatives, as
well as activities for older people. After the president of Nowedo opened the debate
on whether the club should take a stance of mere acceptance or action, participants
reflected on moves toward individualism and young people’s preferences to social-
ize with their own friends. They explored what initiatives had already been taken in
welcoming deaf youth, parents of deaf children, and hearing people and discussed
which other initiatives could be developed, such as cooperation with neighborhood
deaf schools.
In Turnhout, the organization of Flemish Deaf Parliament during their annual
meeting provided a “response in practice” since over 100 members from all sec-
tions, including youth and elders, participated in the meeting. The club orga-
nizes its annual New Year reception on a time/day that enables as many members
as possible to attend, fostering intergenerational contact. This is an example
of good practice that may inspire other deaf clubs to formulate sustainable re-
sponses to contemporary challenges. Similarly, in Metamorphoses of the World, Beck
(2015, p. 85) argues for a “generational change” that “is not only about a differ-
ence in political perspective, situations of social inequality, conflicts and crisis
but about a difference in being in the world, seeing of the world, and imagining
and doing politics.” One of the possible approaches for conceptualizing identity
in these times, taking into account metamorphoses of identity, is the post-identity
approach, which was developed in nomadic theory. I explore this further in the
next section.