64 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
oralism and the absence of deaf cultural rhetoric. To understand the standard hear-
ing view that Flemish deaf people had internalized (Freire, 2005; Jankowski, 1997),
here I illustrate how oralism controlled the information provided to the deaf com-
munity in both deaf schools and deaf clubs.
As Filip verstraete (translated interview, 2003), a Flemish deaf leader, explained,
there was no deaf cultural rhetoric transmitted in deaf families:yes, my parents are deaf and when I was a kid, nothing was ever said about
what it meant to be deaf, about who you are as a deaf person, a deaf identity,
deaf awareness. Really nothing; that was not discussed at all, never. I knew that
deafness is a disability; that is the way it is.Ronny van Landuyt (translated interview, 2004), who joined the Gallaudet trip,
reflected upon the previous absence of deaf cultural rhetoric in deaf clubs and deaf
schools:When we were 12 years old, we went to high school. In high school, the
school level was higher; that was good. In the dormitory, we had a priest.
He organized well, priest X, who passed away. Things were better; there
were a couple of teachers who used signs. There were two teachers who
really signed enough; the others were oral. But it was not the case that
we broadened our horizons about “deaf,” no, nothing. It was always the
same: lesson, lesson, lesson. Speech exercises, language exercises, math
exercises. narrow minded. nothing about history, nothing about the
world, nothing about interesting things.. .When I finally went to the
deaf club, it was not interesting. It was always soccer, soccer. Really for
hours. now I can say that was crap, but before I didn’t realize that. For
me, that was not interesting. It was just about one theme; other topics
were not discussed.The individuals I interviewed for my research all talked about times after the
1960s, when indeed all deaf cultural rhetoric, deaf history, and community knowl-
edge seemed to be gone. nonetheless, there has always been a small group of
people to whom deafhood has been transmitted (Ladd, 2003). In addition, a small
group has always played a role in the Federation of the Deaf (although it was
established and dominated by clergy), and in the 1970s there was a group of deaf
people who wanted to set up a federation run by deaf people themselves (Raem-
donck & Scheiris, 2007). yet apart from these small groups, the majority of deaf
people were left in the dark. Any alternative discourse that perceived deaf people
as an ethnolinguistic minority rather than a group of disabled people was blocked.
In the interviews in my case study, research participants explained how they provided
deaf friends with information gathered in their own deaf families and from main-
stream news media. They strongly reacted against teachers in schools for the deaf who
were not able to communicate with deaf students who depended on sign language.
Deaf people were also blocked from gathering general background knowledge about
the world. Flemish deaf people refer to this stage, which is marked by fixed (medical)
identities (Braidotti, 1998) and the absence of deaf cultural rhetoric, as sleeping.