162 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
with neoliberal ideologies of gain and loss that have become adopted by the Flemish
deaf community) to attend to who she is as a “unique existent.”
Desire is also a driving force in the theory of Braidotti, who argues for transform-
ing the negative emotion of fear into a productive affirmative stance and a notion
of identity, which opens up processes of becoming and complex and multiple forms
of belonging. This section draws on these theories to look into desire in relation to
deaf storytelling, as it touches on two sides of the coin of deaf identity: unity (whole-
ness) and uniqueness.
In an essay on the writing of her memoir, The Art of Being Deaf (McDonald, 2014b),
Donna McDonald looks upon the process of storytelling as a means to gain a better
understanding of her self and her deaf self: “the act of writing a memoir can be an
important tool in resolving questions of identity” (2014a, p. 77). In this narrative
process, she was guided by diverse deaf memoirs, navigating along their tracks while
writing her own account, to “become a member of the diaspora of deaf writers shar-
ing their experiences” (p. 84).
Indeed, it takes courage to tell one’s story, definitely in the light of a history of few
“chance encounters with deaf heroes and heroines,... competing representations
of deaf people and deafness, [and] the shifting nuances of deaf identity,... cau-
tioned against the comforts of a standard tool kit of deaf knowledge” (McDonald,
2010, p. 463).
As argued in this chapter (and in Chapter 2), we are in need of “forms of repre-
sentation that do justice to the complexities of the kinds of subjects we have already
become” (Braidotti, 2011, p. 263). Both Agnes, in the liminal time/space of Flemish
Deaf Parliament, and Donna McDonald, in the writing of her memoir, did justice to
these complexities, “telling fresh stories” (McDonald, 2010, p. 468) and creating a
new form of representation and a new narrative of being deaf.
McDonald touches upon “the impulse to tell our stories” (2014a, p. 82), pointing
out that this impulse is constrained by the pain and traumatic experiences of deaf
people in having their stories unattended or not respectfully attended:
The impulse to tell our stories—especially if we are seeking to correct the
record of false impressions, misunderstandings, secrets, and plain bunkum—
is universal, but the gift of courage to attend to those stories, to really lean in
close and grasp the lesson within, is rarer.
Such courage requires patience, a quality not always in abundant supply
in people who can hear unassisted when confronted by a deaf person with a
broken voice or dancing hands.... The frustration of not being attended to,
free of the fog of stereotyping, and the hurt of being taken for a fool, restrain
the impulse to tell our stories. (p. 82)
The writing of her memoir enabled McDonald to gain a better understanding of her
identity, although some questions remained unanswered, and it was an open-ended
practice without “a conclusive sensation of arrival” (p. 84). However, she ended her
reflection with reference to the sense of wholeness that she has enabled through the
writing: “I reconciled my childhood deaf self with my adult hearing-deaf persona.
The two selves have merged into one. In the end, my final destination has been