198 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
work in a “circle of support,” has made a difference in an insecure and competitive
environment. Their belief in me fueled the progression of my research until I was
able to regain self-confidence.
These practices of nurturance have contributed to my reconceptualization of my
research as working in connection with other people and, as I describe in the next
paragraphs, in connection with the deaf community. The confidence, leadership,
and academic skills I found among these colleagues in this period set high stan-
dards for the kind of scholarship and ethics I hope to live up to.
In those challenging times, I was struggling even more with the paradox of
researching empowerment while not feeling empowered. I had been aware of this
earlier when I was experiencing difficulties in my phD trajectory. But now, probably
also because I got sick, the paradox disturbed me even more, and triggered reflection.
In “The Meaning of Being: Beyond the Quest for Happiness,” a chapter in her
book Psychotherapy and the Quest for Happiness, Emmy van Deurzen (2009) reflects on
the relevance of finding meaning in an existential view of life and counseling, as well
as in the paradoxes that are inherent in our lives: “In the process of coming to terms
with the meanings of life, an ability to live with ambiguity and paradox is essential.
The wise person is a person who can creatively process apparent contradictions and
conflicted information in a narrative that makes sense” (p. 158). Dealing with this
paradox in my life and work was indeed about the process of creating meaning from
the hard realities of everyday life and finding sense in the cultural, social, and polit-
ical contexts in and between which I was moving, living, and working.
Under pressure to publish my work, I was in limbo. Because modern academia
values and expects individual progress, measured in publications, I was left with
little time to engage with the deaf community, which, after all, was the focus of my
research. McDermid (2009, p. 242) describes this dilemma as a cross-cultural con-
flict between the “pseudo-ethical requirements” (based the theory of Spivak, 1995,
p. 26, in which she refers to “the thematic of obligation and duty”) of the academy
and the collectivist perspective of the deaf community. I was thus unable to do what
I was supposed to do as a deaf scholar—share resources, lead, contribute to the
community, and give back the knowledge and wisdom deaf people had passed on to
me. This was the hardest part of what had happened. It went against my beliefs and
against the practices of deaf culture. I could not live with it.
When I was not able to engage in sharing with the deaf community and to contrib-
ute as an active member, I experienced an existential conflict. The entire process of
writing a doctoral dissertation that had cultural import in the community and had
raised expectations of giving back suddenly lost meaning. Even my sense of who I
was as a person began to become lost. The anthropologist Renato Rosaldo (1989) sit-
uates meaning in practice: “The failure to perform rituals can create anxiety” (p. 6).
In this process, I also realized the limits of culture. How—from the cultural world
view of Gallaudet (and, by extension, the global deaf world)—could I have felt dis-
empowered? An uncritical view of empowerment as something that can be “given”
to others is still common and promoted (also see the discussions of deaf cultural
rhetoric in Chapters 3, 4 and 6) and my own experiences of powerlessness and not
being able to exchange knowledge and contribute to this intergenerational process