Deaf Ways of Education 65
DEAF CULTURAL RHEToRIC AnD IDEAL DEAF PLACES
The rhetoric of deaf people perceiving themselves as an ethnolinguistic minority
group was presented to the world for the first time in the Gallaudet revolution in 1988
(Jankowski, 1997). Jankowski explains that three important rhetorics can be identified
that have been empowering for deaf people in the United States. First, there is the
rhetoric of sign language as a formal language, supported by a sign language dictionary
and sign language research in the 1960s and 1970s. Second, there is the rhetoric of deaf
culture, which allowed deaf people to perceive mainstreaming and inclusion as cultural
genocide and to defy the label of disabled. The rhetoric of the deaf community as an eth-
nolinguistic minority opened the doors for the empowering third rhetoric: the can-do
rhetoric. This rhetoric of equality liberated deaf people from the rhetoric of hearing
paternalism and from their internalized oppression. Deaf people are now proud to be
deaf and can decide about their own lives. The latter stage can be illustrated by I. King
Jordan’s famous and empowering statement, “Deaf people can do anything that hear-
ing people can except hear” (Christiansen & Barnartt, 1995, p. 164).
When drawing comparisons to the rhetoric that was empowering for deaf peo-
ple in the United States, parallels with the deaf cultural rhetoric in Denmark and
Flanders can be clearly seen. The rhetoric of deaf people as an ethnolinguistic mi-
nority group that can be proud of itself; that believes in its ability, equality, and
independence; and that actively advocates for better deaf lives seems to be empow-
ering for deaf people in different localities in the world (De Clerck, 2005; Widell,
2000). Regarding his trip to the netherlands in 1991, Filip verstraete said,We tried to set up an exchange with the netherlands, and so I saw: “Wow,
with that and that and that, the netherlands is more advanced!” yeah, we had
established Jong- Fevlado [Federation of Flemish Deaf youth organizations]
to discuss things about activities, make sure we had the same dates, and so on,
but what it meant to be young and deaf—access, participation, advocacy... we
had never thought about that. And then we went to the netherlands, and we
saw that they were more advanced, more aware of deafness: We have to put
pressure, make demands: that and that and that.... oh, I had never thought
about things in that way, but that’s how things grew. I had more and more
foreign contacts, and my eyes opened: I swallowed everything, grabbed every-
thing. I became more aware: I got it!
I had always thought, “Deaf, that is a disability and then you can do fewer
things.” But through those foreign contacts and the information that I re-
ceived, I developed. I do mind that it only started then; I was already grown
up! Maybe I was 21 or 22 when I became more aware of deafness, when I
started to develop, when I could grab all those things. When I was 18 and had
just started to work in the world of signs, I didn’t have much information yet.
I only started to develop when I worked here [Flanders]. I learned so much
through the information that I received and could exchange. I feel a huge dif-
ference between now and 10, 15 years ago. I was never ever taught something,
never. Good that we had those contacts abroad; also [my boss] gave a lot of
information on what exists. Deaf people are strong; deaf people can! That’s
how I became more aware, completely changed! (translated interview, 2003)