Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning

Deaf Ways of Education 63

Flemish Sign Language should be used in deaf schools rather than Signed Dutch.

When members of the Flemish deaf community were explaining the kadercursus,

it was clear that they had been provided with a new rhetoric that had broken away

from the past. Social movements “provide their members with an alternative rheto-

ric that brings a different ideology, different behaviors, and different identity into

day-to-day life” (Jankowski, 1997, p. 4). As I illustrate in this chapter, the power of

the kadercursus was in its waking up, or raising of awareness:

now empowered with a rhetoric that brings a different ideology to day-to-day

life, the oppressed have a new power to celebrate their heritage, to reject

labels imposed on them by their oppressors, and to acquire new traits that

enhance feelings of pride and power. ( Jankowski, 1997, p. 6)

RESEARCH FInDInGS

The stage in their lives before they come into contact with cultural rhetoric is

described by Flemish deaf people as sleeping.^5 After examining the sleeping stage,

I highlight the deaf cultural rhetoric that will lead to Flemish deaf people’s

empowerment. I argue that deaf empowerment can be defined as the “insurrection

of subjugated [deaf] knowledges” (Pease, 2002, p. 33),^6 thereby illustrating how

deaf people create their own education through a common sign language (Mottez,

1993), deaf experience (Murray, 2008), and the experience of a barrier-free envi-

ronment ( Jankowski, 1997), or a deaf dream world. In conclusion, I reflect on the

transitions that deaf identities experience in this process of empowerment, distin-

guishing between the waking up and the circle of deaf empowerment stages.

SLEEPInG

Flemish deaf role models emphasize the stages of before and after in their life stories,

marking the changes that global deaf encounters have brought to their lives. The

sleeping metaphor refers to the oppression that deaf people experienced during

5. The phenomenon of awakening, and deaf people’s experience of a turning point in their lives,
   runs as a theme through the book, and is explored further in each of the next chapters, each time
   highlighting a different aspect. While the focus of this chapter is on shared experiences in the first
   stage of deaf empowerment, Chapter 6 also provides perspectives of recent and ongoing individual
   experiences of awakening and challenges in articulating complex concepts of identity, which are still
   moving. In Chapter 4, international deaf people at Gallaudet not only look back on their awakening,
   but also talk about conflicts they individually experience when returning to their countries of origin
   and communities who are still “asleep” and how they are negotiating identities of empowerment.
   Chapters 5 and 8 provide different views in relation to awakening in the Cameroonian deaf community,
   highlighting both the slumber and frustration that come with a lack of future perspectives and the
   energy of a recent and small-scale deaf awakening process that occurred during the time of the study in
   a small group of leaders, fostered by international exchange.


6. For a discussion on the status of deaf knowledge and a theoretical framework on deaf epistemologies,
   see Chapter 2.