52 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
theorizing around these identities is secure enough to withstand such challenge
and to resist the threat of nihilism in outcome. The question lies open as to
whether Deaf identity or identities are in equally safeguarded position. (p. 456)Ladd (2003) also warns about relativism in a time in which minority groups are mov-
ing toward emancipation and are able to represent themselves politically. With the
concept of Deafhood, he aims to create “an academic space... which recognizes
the existence of ‘counternarratives’ in themselves, a pole around which resistance
thinking can even be organized” (p. 81). Simultaneously, he also responds to the
“dangers of essentialism”: “I hope, then, that in succeeding years others may be
able to develop readings which refine and ‘de-essentialize’ this one, as far as that is
necessary” (p. 81).
The naturalized stance in this chapter is a response to this hope, both from ana-
lytical and normative points of view. It is a major challenge in the light of the “new
era of participation and collaboration” and the questions of (1) how to deal with
intrinsic human diversity, including deafness, in educational and societal contexts
in an increasingly globalized and urbanized world and (2) how to foster human
flourishing (nussbaum, 2006), that is, help all people to live up to their potential.
This naturalized stance benefits from an anthropological conceptualization of
human beings as learners in a particular social, political, economic, and cultural
context, which is based on the theories of vygotsky (1978) and Cole (1996) (De
Clerck & Pinxten, 2012a, 2016). Identities are shaped and constructed in relation
to the social and cultural resources that are available and in interaction with peers
and other people (for further discussion and an application to deaf identity as a
learning process, see Chapter 4). In this vein, Appiah (2005) conceptualizes an
ethical self as a dialogical self:As we come to maturity, the identities we make, our individualities, are inter-
pretive responses to our talents and disabilities, and the changing social, se-
mantic, and material contexts we enter at birth; and we develop our identities
dialectically with our capacities and circumstances, because they are in part
the product of what our identities lead us to. (p. 163)In contrast to these authors, I argue that nihilism is not the only alternative to essen-
tialism. While human beings are genetically relatively homogenous, all human beings
are individually different. As a result of these small differences, across the ages over
time, human beings have developed various strategies for survival that differ accord-
ing to the natural and historical contexts in which they were living. From generation
to generation, in the learning process toward becoming human, there has been room
for interpretation. These differences can be acknowledged without turning differ-
ence into a dogmatic norm that considers all variation as “deviance” (Pinxten, 2007).
nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen (2006) noticed that in times of mobilization of
cultural and religious identity, the perception of people as members of only one
particular group promotes violence. A dominant group or communal identity may
become a destiny that can only be discovered through self-actualization. Whereas