172 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
The uncertainty of contemporary global times has entered the classroom and the
deaf community, raising questions for which its members, teachers, and profes-
sionals do not have ready answers and for which sustainable futures need to be
imagined. Aiming to respond to this challenge, this chapter has embedded and
embodied deaf studies in current transitions in an attempt at reflection and reflex-
ivity (also see De Clerck, 2016b).
Practices of deaf citizenship in Flanders have been shaped along the trails of
emancipation in Europe and the United States and across the nomadic capital of es-
sentialized notions of identity and culture. Cartographies of the lived and narrated
realities of these deaf citizens facilitate insight into tensions in emancipation, illumi-
nating its complexity and dynamism and critically problematizing the epistemic and
ontological violence in dominant narratives of the quest for identity and belonging.
In Arendt’s view, while physically born in the private realm, citizens are born for the
second time when they enter the public sphere; it is through regaling our story there
that we show who we are. Cavarero has furthered this in the notion of the narratable
self, deepening the role of desire in storytelling. Valorizing this cultural practice, this
chapter has explored second birth stories of deaf citizens in Flanders that have been
told for deaf community members, society, and deaf studies research. Through the
lens of nomadic theory (Braidotti, 2011), these stories can be conceptualized as “lines
of flight” and moments at which deaf citizens embrace movements of transformation.
By courageously conveying his/her own story, drawing on deaf cultural resources
and dialogue with community members, the storytellers have generated uniqueness
and wholeness, changing collective narratives. The sensitivity, doubt, silence, and
not knowing that are parts of the process of storytelling, as well as the intergenera-
tional debate, transform anxiety into an affirmative identity stance, making possible
multiple affiliations and forms of belonging. The desire to tell one’s story and the
generative potentia of being born for the second time is a driving force behind
cracking the mirror of the deaf community’s dominant tale of birth, giving way to
open futures and endless stories of origin.
The crossroads of ontology and epistemology invites a shift from being a deaf par-
ent, elderly person, woman, community newcomer, migrant, or student with ques-
tions on community norms of success, to a process of becoming. This betweenness
can be captured in a stance of post-identity, which may paradoxically refer to an
identity-based time frame while simultaneously going beyond it.
According to Hannah Arendt, “[t]he world is full of stories because it is full of
lives... [and] to be faithful to the story ‘means being faithful to the life’” (Arendt,
cited in Cavarero, 2000, p. 143). For sustainable futures, we will need to be faithful
to the wide range of life stories of deaf people, whether in deaf studies research,
professional practice, or grassroots activities.NOTE
My postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation Flanders supported my
research on the Flemisa Deaf Parliament. Special thanks to Kathleen Vercruysse and
Ayfer Icelosly, who volunteered to facilitate the meetings.