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Meeting Global Deaf Peers, Visiting Ideal Deaf Places: Deaf Ways of Education Leading to Empowerment, An Exploratory Case Study
- American Annals of the Deaf
- Gallaudet University Press
- Volume 152, Number 1, Spring 2007
- pp. 5-19
- 10.1353/aad.2007.0009
- Article
- Additional Information
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In a Flemish case study, deaf role models revealed a moment of awakening, indicated by the Flemish sign WAKE-UP. Contact with deaf cultural rhetoric made them wake up, and deconstruct and reconstruct their lives, a process represented by a circle of deaf empowerment. Flemish deaf leaders mentioned acquiring this rhetoric during visits to deaf dream worlds (in Flemish Sign Language, WORLD DREAM): places with ideal conditions for deaf people. Such global deaf encounters (Breivik, Haualand, & Solvang, 2002) lead to the "insurrection of subjugated [deaf] knowledges" (Pease, 2002, p. 33). Whereas deaf education had never provided them with deaf cultural rhetoric and was depositing upon them oppressive societal conventions (Jankowski, 1997), a common sign language (Mottez, 1993) and global deaf experience (Breivik et al., 2002; Murray, in press) in barrier-free environments (Jankowski, 1997) provided deaf ways of deaf education (Erting, 1996; Reilly, 1995).