Deaf Identity Revisited 155
KArinA: Also I have just seen young people entering the club, shyly looking at
deaf elders. I think to myself, well, you will also be old one day. How old are you
now? 18? Many young people are a little afraid, which is normal because they
have never seen “deaf grandfathers and grandmothers.”
GerAldine: Yes, but I notice that young deaf people tend to sit together all the
time, staying in their peer group.
KArinA: Yes, but they are entering the club and for the first time seeing older
deaf people, who are a little different. So they are reserved, and that’s normal.
I also did that when I was young and the club was new to me.
GerAldine: Hmm. But I would like to add that we had a good time before with
deaf people of different ages intermingling in the club; that is different from
now, with deaf people dispersed and away in other places. Where is the human
contact?The dialogue continued, with young people sharing their experiences of contact
with deaf elders and encouraging their peers to listen to stories of the past. Inter-
generational dialogue fosters exchange and understanding of different views, as
well as the exploration of a shared future. The young people were curious about the
deaf elders’ expectations of quality of life in the old days. Contrariwise, deaf elders
showed much interest in the educational experiences of the youth. The desire of
deaf elders for care providers who know Flemish Sign Language and a continued
connection with their community through caretakers who are deaf corresponds to
the desire of young deaf individuals who are looking for meaningful employment
and professional training that enables them to work with deaf people.
Although there is space between the act of discussion and possible action that fol-
lows, dialogue generates problem-solving, with shared future perspectives emerging
on the horizon (also see Chapter 8):The embodied structure of the subject is a limit in itself. To accept differ-
ential boundaries does not condemn us to relativism, but to the necessity to
negotiate each passage. In other words: we need a dialogical mode. We need
future-oriented perspectives, which do not deny the traumas of the past but
transform them into possibilities for the present. Not the heavenly future, but
rather a more sustainable one, situated here and now. (Braidotti, 2011, p. 234)As an open citizenship platform, Flemish Deaf Parliament aims to foster cross-
generational equity, in a space of “learning” or community of practice, “where indi-
viduals and organizations are encouraged to learn about the dynamics of where they
live and how it is changing; a place that can learn to change the conditions of its learn-
ing democratically” (Landry, 2006, p. 311). Dialogue enables older and younger deaf
people, some of the latter never having met deaf elders before, to show who they are
in unique and unpredictable ways, evoking new personal and collective beginnings:For the deaf space is a visual space, an “eye” space. It is also, I submit, an
I-space. We still have a lot to learn from each “I” and from each “eye.”