176 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
In the fifth section, I follow this discussion with an account of how dealing with
this paradox inspired me to look for strength and wisdom, which I found in both
personal and collective resources. During a postgraduate training course at Leuven
University in Belgium, titled “Coaching and Counseling in Existential Well-Being,”
I gained new insights by reflecting on this process from counseling perspectives. My
exploration of the paradox of working toward empowerment in a disempowering
context and identifying collective resources as a treasure from which I developed
strength as an individual was deepened and enriched by considering multiple per-
spectives, including those of disciplines other than anthropology. These reflections
have enabled me to view my work as an anthropology of deaf flourishing and to under-
stand the methodological approach I have constructed during my research as one
that is strength centered.
In the chapter’s sixth and final section, I define this anthropology of deaf flour-
ishing and this strength-centered ethnographic approach further, and I make a con-
nection with an epistemological stance aimed to suit both individuals and commu-
nities in these changing times.THE ETHNOGRApHIC SELF AS A RESOURCE: FINDING
AGENCy AND EMpOWERMENT
During my phD defense, a scholar in gender studies asked me about my “positionality,”
that is, the axes of difference and identity upon which I positioned myself in society
and in my fieldwork and which had influenced my research process. I responded
that I was working on this process but needed some time to distance myself and
reflect on the movements I had made as a deaf scholar in my personal journey and
in the multiple sites of my fieldwork. I was aware of the interaction between my
biography and my production of knowledge, but within the process of my doctoral
program I did not find the necessary space and security for an authentic reflection
on this process and for making this reflection public. As the first deaf person ever
awarded a doctoral degree in Flanders for ethnographic research with the Flemish
deaf community and subsequent to a public defense in sign language, I had to over-
come many barriers during my studies because of my “subaltern”^4 social position, by
which I mean the perpetually inferior role ascribed to me by academia and society.
This contrasted sharply with my subjective experience of empowerment and strug-
gle for a more equal place in society. I had experienced the barriers during my doc-
toral studies in academia as threatening, and, as a result of this experienced inferior-
ity, the “I” had literally disappeared from my work. It was only in the epistemological
reflections at the end of my doctoral dissertation that I found and claimed room for
my own position in scholarship. As a postdoctoral scholar, now writing a half-decade
after my graduation and in an extended postdoctoral research post, I am finding
that there is scope for reflection and discussion on the ethnographic self as an an-
thropological site and for empowerment as a result of this process. Methodologically,
I draw on discussions in anthropology, gender studies, deaf studies, and wellbeing.- For applications of subaltern theory (Spivak, 1995) in deaf studies, see also Ladd (2003).