10 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
inside, a deaf seed. It could not sprout, but a deaf friend helped me—she
poured water on the seed, so that it could germinate and grow like a flower.
Deaf people have a seed, and that automatically gives us the ideas so that
we can find our way through life—learn sign language, etc. I looked for all
those things myself and was successful. I noticed that many international deaf
people had the same experiences before, but they were further ahead, and I
asked them, How do you do this and that? I copied from them, and followed
in the same way.As much as such a description can help us understand diverse deaf cultural and
language practices, there is a risk of reading these metaphors as linear and uni-
versal processes of development. This risk resides in both dominant narratives of
modernity and the hierarchical binary of “modern” or “developed” versus “not yet”
(Ferguson, 2008; also see Chapter 8), which has increasingly become tied to neolib-
eral ideology and the production of inequality among “players” and “non-players”
in globalized societies (Dominelli, 2007b). These factors have placed pressure on
the paradigm of empowerment, especially neoliberalism, which is largely defined
here as the promotion of industrial capitalism and extension of free-market values
to social relations and other domains, dispersing and weakening communities (Bau-
man, 2007; Dominelli, 2007a, 2007b; Sandel, 2009). These narratives have also in-
fluenced deaf/sign language communities, as was illustrated earlier in this chapter,
as well as in Chapters 6 and 8.
Taking into account critiques of the notion of empowerment that assert that it is
culturally situated, and emphasizes autonomy and choice (Riger, 1997), the studies
in this book support the self-reflexive movement in the fields of community psychol-
ogy and social work that aims to develop “locality-specific” (Dominelli, 2010) and
critical and contextual approaches to empowerment (Duncan et al., 2007). Work-
ing toward understandings of emancipation and equality that allow for different
identities and views (Dominelli, 2010), while still acknowledging the variety of pos-
sible pathways and synergies in processes of co-development (Duncan et al., 2007),
this book endeavors to describe deaf empowerment as it emerges in personal and
collective narratives of deaf communities in Europe, Africa, and the United States.
As discussed in Chapter 6, this includes room for a broad continuum of agency,
including silence, voice, “not knowing,” and emerging awareness, encompassing
many ways of being and becoming deaf (Hoegaerts & De Clerck, in press).
The narrative given above touches on both sides of the coin of an essentialized
deaf identity (quest) concept, which may be a catalyzer fueling processes of deaf
empowerment while also posing risks of unitary identity notions, hegemonic dis-
courses, and exclusion (also see Chapter 2). Therefore, in addition to emancipation
and empowerment (Chapters 3, 4, and 5), this book explores the tension in these
constructs as well as fresh, dynamic perspectives on the quest for deaf identity and
heritage (Chapter 6).
Furthermore, by introducing a framework of deaf flourishing, or an interdisci-
plinary “anthropology of deaf flourishing” (Chapter 7), this work aims to offer a
broader and culturally sensitive perspective in which well-being is “an optimal state