Deaf Flourishing 25
In line with a social justice and capability approach, this exploration of partner-
ship starts from a broader view of human beings as learners—especially in the areas
of cultural dynamics, values, and human rights. As De Clerck and Pinxten (2012a)
argue, the thing that most strongly distinguishes human beings from other crea-
tures is the extensiveness and impact of culture. More than animals, human beings
undergo immense development that is not “natural,” given, or entirely biologically
programmed. For example, human beings learn insights, languages, religions, and
values from earlier generations and pass them on. Also, humans’ range of knowl-
edge and forms of learning are continuously extended.
In the last century, after millennia of systemic discrimination, cruelty, murder,
and especially the genocide of World War II, people created human rights as a kind
of charter of agreement to grant each other equality and live accordingly. Also,
these rights are evidence of human beings’ efforts to learn; in them, we can see at
least an attempt to teach equality, freedom, and solidarity as shared values. Even if
we admit that progress toward these values is slow and uncertain, we can recognize
that, for the first time in history, humankind has developed an instrument of social
intercourse that grants all of us the same rights and basic respect. We have done
worse in the past, so it is worthwhile to emphasize this instrument and teach it to
the next generation.
When we look at the emancipation process of deaf communities from this point
of view, we can extrapolate the following: For the first time, it is conceivable and
doable to extend the equality of all human beings to those who were, in the past,
said to have a handicap or disability. In this classification, deaf or blind people, for
example, were frequently seen as not belonging to the community of free and equal
people because of this one characteristic of difference from the “norm.” That re-
sulted in a “special” and separate treatment of these people. nussbaum (2006) ar-
gues that based on this reasoning, which has also been integrated into the liberal
model of the social contract among free citizens (as developed by the political phi-
losopher John Rawls), citizens learn from generation to generation that people with
disabilities can never achieve equality or emancipation because of their disability.
Furthermore, Margalit (1996) states that if a society systematically and continually
humiliates a group or individual by preventing the optimal development of their
personality, that society is indecent and consequently needs to undergo a learning
process to alter this intrinsic attitude of exclusion.
From the viewpoint of the deaf community, the current trend of “awakening”
and claiming rights is a change in how this learning process can be perceived. It is
no longer the case that the “other” needs to stay quiet and accept the treatment of
the majority. on the contrary, because of human rights, which apply to the entire
(world) population, the deaf community explicitly proposes that hearing citizens
and institutions need to adapt their learning process to extend emancipation and
equality sincerely to non-hearing fellow citizens (see also Lavrysen, 2012). The prob-
lem does not lie in the condition of being different or disabled, but again, in the cul-
ture of treating such people as inferior, a view and way of acting that is learned over
generations based on a supposed expertise regarding differences. The perspective
of De Clerck and Pinxten (2012a) is that these practices need to be adapted, and the