Deaf Ways of Education 69
subjugated knowledge” (p. 33). Identifying oppressed people’s “strengths and
knowledges” and spreading that knowledge over the community “can be a force for
social change” (Pease, 2002, p. 35). Pease argues that discourse is one of the means
through which majority groups dominate minority groups. Therefore,empowerment can be understood as producing alternative power-saturated
knowledge rather than as seeking to seize or take power. Political struggle
can thus be conceptualized as the struggle between different knowledges
(Ranson, 1993). If knowledges and power are inseparable from one another,
as Foucault (1980, 1988) suggests, then we must recognize the link between
the empowerment of oppressed people and the development and distribution
of knowledge (Hartman, 1992). (Pease, 2002, p. 33)Foucault’s concept of power governmentality is crucial to an understanding of the
stress on oppressed people’s agency: “Governance is not only something done to
us by those in power; it is something we do to ourselves. We thus act upon our
own subjectivity to govern ourselves” (1980, cited in Pease, 2002, p. 32). For Fou-
cault, power and resistance go hand in hand. That does not imply that people are
always in conflict; people can internalize oppression, accept the dominant rhetoric,
and—as such—not always liberate themselves (Charlton, 1998; Freire, 2005; Pease,
2002). yet Pease states that we can “support marginalized people’s resistance and
assist in the insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (2002, p. 33). Crucial to this is
that marginalized people come into contact with new discourses that produce new
knowledges and promise free and alternative ways of living (Jankowski, 1997). This
is what Flemish deaf people experienced through participating in the kadercursus,
seeing Gallaudet University and the Danish Federation of the Deaf, and talking to
empowered deaf people.
As I have previously mentioned, it seems that deaf cultural rhetoric disappeared
after the 1960s (see also Ladd, 2003). As the life stories of Flemish deaf activists
reveal, deaf cultural rhetoric was not taught in deaf schools, and it was not discussed
and passed on in the deaf community and through deaf families. Deaf education
had been very minimal; as a result, many deaf people not only graduated as func-
tional analphabetics but were also seriously limited in their knowledge about the
world (Broeckaert, Bogaerts, & Clement, 1994; van Herreweghe, 1995). Therefore,
deaf people did not have access to liberating rhetoric from other social movements
in Flanders through media such as newspapers and television. It was not until 1992
that the television news was captioned and therefore made accessible to deaf people
(D’Hoore, vandevelde, & verstraete, 1998). Many people were frustrated by deaf
education. Gaby (translated interview, 2004), a Flemish deaf leader, looked back on
her deaf school years:I loved to study; I am a curious person: practice a lot, learn a lot, and know
a lot. But I was very frustrated that the teacher always taught about speaking,
speaking properly. That was such a waste of time. Really, the goal of learning:
information, knowledge... we didn’t see much of that.