Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric

7 Conclusion

7 Conclusion This book began as an examination of the Deaf social movement's rhetorical strategies to shape empowerment of its cultural identity. Such a study brings a new understanding of the role social movements play in the empowerment of not only the Deaf community, but of other marginalized groups as well. The uniqueness of the communication modality used by Deaf people also brought on a status that distinguished it from other marginalized groups. As a result, in the case ofthe Deafsocial movement, communication is not merely the means, but is the issue itself. This phenomenon presents a vision of a different world for communication . The first section ofthis conclusion will focus on what has been learned about social movements and their treatment by rhetorical scholars. The second will address what has been learned about the Deaf social movement. Toward a Theory of Empowerment in Social Movements The study of social movements by rhetorical scholars is still a relatively new area of research, affording rich opportunities to contribute to the field. The dominant theory of social movements has tended to treat these movements as marginalized groups trying to establish access to the dominant society. Such an approach is baSically an integrationist theory of appeal. Social movements are, thus, studied from the perspective of the marginal trying to access the dominant society by persuading the dominant to allow 163 164 Conclusion them to do so, rather than from the perspective of encouraging society to accept diversity. As this study of the Deaf social movement has illustrated, studying social movements within a framework of empowerment and Foucault's characterization of the normalizing process brings out a new dimension of social movements. Such a treatment places social movements as a powerful force challenging the dominant society to create change by accommodating marginalized peoples. This approach to studying movements brings on an understanding of how the process of empowerment not only creates the impetus for a social movement, but sustains and expands a cycle of empowerment that reaches out to marginalized members and increases from one generation to the next. This understanding of the role of empowerment explains how each generation of marginalized groups becomes emboldened and, thus, more willing to challenge the dominant society. In the application of a theory of empowerment to the Deaf social movement, we were able to see how the conflicting pressures of dominance and resistance played out through the historical struggle of the Deaf community and the dominant society. Even as dominant themes of normalization repeatedly prevailed throughout the years, the Deaf movement was able to resist by creating counterstrategies. These counterstrategies increased in strength and assertiveness as more Deaf people adopted strategies to create pride in themselves. The struggles between the dominant and dominated were illustrated as they played themselves out from one generation to the next, increasing in intensity, and as themes repeated themselves in new contexts, as, for example, in pathologic discourses that first forced oralism on the Deaf community , then later returned in stronger force, as surgical implants. By studying these stages in the Deaf movement through a theory of empowerment, we were able to appreciate the efforts of the movement to build an internal community. In this vein, the integrationist approach to the study of movements restricts, in that a narrow frame of access to the dominant society overshadows the research, and significant strategies for empowerment may Conclusion 165 be overlooked. This suggests that studies of social movements would benefit from a theory of empowerment to escape from integrationist inclinations. Using Foucault's depiction of the normalizing process to study movements fits in well with a theory of empowerment. For one thing, a Foucaultian approach helps us understand the position of social movements as they challenge the normalizing pattern so ingrained in the dominant society. Beyond that, the rhetorical construct of normality helps us understand how movements become marginalized by rhetorical studies based on the assumption that movements seek access to society. The perception ofthe dominant society as "normal" has inadvertently created a parallel expectation that movements, in representing the "deViant;' seek access to the "normal." So implicit is this practice that rhetorical scholars have accepted this integrationist approach as the norm. By using a Foucaultian approach, this tendency becomes clear and thus becomes a useful guide in preventing such tendencies. In addition to the empowerment and Foucaultian frame of study, the treatment of the Deaf social movement in this book...