Era of Epistemological Equity 51
Research participants who grew up in a majority-black environment abroad
developed a strong sense of identity and took leadership roles within the black deaf
community and the wider deaf community. Participants who grew up in the United
Kingdom but traveled abroad self-identified as both black and black deaf and sup-
ported deaf leaders. Those who had not traveled expressed a less developed sense
of racial identity. People who identified as “black deaf” experienced black culture
as a part of their heritage and deaf culture as an adopted culture; they had access
to black hearing communication and communicated primarily in spoken English.
People who identified as “deaf black” primarily identified as deaf because of their
access to sign language in the deaf community and had a strong sense of identity
and equality. Some informants resisted being identified as black or as deaf. The
researchers concluded that “the informants rarely achieved an equal balance in
their feelings toward their bicultural identities. They negotiated and renegotiated
their identities in different situations” (James & Woll, 2004, p. 157).
These studies illuminate the contextualization and complexity of identity con-
structions and call for intersectionality, a research method and theoretical tool
(Crenshaw, 1991; Thorvalsdottir, 2007). In these studies, and the studies presented
in the two previous sections, essentialist notions of deaf identity also come to the
forefront as particular constructions of deaf identity situated in a specific social and
cultural context and period of time (see De Clerck, 2009a). Essentialized notions
of deaf identity are reproduced, while practices of moving between different con-
texts show multiple identities and conflicts between different identity constructions.
Baumann (1999) conceptualizes this process as a double discursive competence: “People
know when to reify one of their identities, and they know when to question their
own reifications” (p. 139). While a unitary notion of deaf identity has been useful
in processes of deaf empowerment and emancipation, particularly in a (Western
and globalized) context of politicized identities, studies have also revealed that this
construction of deaf identity may be exclusive and oppressive in both Western and
non-Western contexts. While it is important to recognize deaf people’s shared expe-
riences and the empowering potential of notions of global deafhood, it is also nec-
essary to take the theory-ladenness, situatedness, and partiality of deaf experiences
into account (see also Collins, 1990).
obasi (2008) notices that in black studies and gender studies, in line with post-
modern anti-essentialism, scholars have recognized the diversity of black, female,
and disability identities and criticized the universalizing forms of representation
that have failed to take this diversity into account. Reflecting on the more recent
development of deaf studies as a field, situated in comparison to gender studies
and black studies, obasi (2008) raises the question of whether it is the right time to
de-essentialize deaf identities:What also needs to be remembered, however, is the historical significance of
the development of racial and feminist theories, a significant part of which
were developed as a product of resistance to oppressive theories about women
and Black people. The subsequent critiques of these generic theories have
developed over time, but are critiques that have evolved at a time when the