Abstract
In this paper we observe how deaf narrative identity (identities) emerge in creative SASL texts. We first identify how difficulties in establishing deaf cultural identities in the hearing-dominant world are represented in the ‘Man Against Monster’ plot (Booker 2004) commonly employed in sign language narrative. Then we use de Certeau (1984)’s notion of ‘place versus space’ and Heap (2003)’s notion of Sign-deaf space (plus our own term of mediated Sign-speak space) to explore how deaf artists transform the Monster (i.e. oppressing hearing place) into Deafhood and deaf space, which leads to the celebration of sign language and deaf culture. We also demonstrate how the recent notion of sensescape , coined by Rosen (2018), can be used to reinterpret our own approach to deaf narrative identity. The Monster in deaf stories can be understood not only in terms of the audist ideology but also in terms of different sensory orientations between deaf and hearing characters. Creative texts provide a wealth of opportunities to explore how narrative identities are constructed. In fictional stories, deaf narrators step back from being themselves and extract the essence of their shared experience and sublimate it into a search for Deafhood which appeals to the deaf community. Various notions developed within the field of deaf studies, such as Deafhood, deaf space and deaf geographies, are useful in (re-)interpreting existing texts and shedding a new light on them.
Highlights
IntroductionWe explore how sign language artists (deaf storytellers and poets) construct their deaf identities through creative narratives (“deaf narrative identity”)
In this article, we explore how sign language artists construct their deaf identities through creative narratives (“deaf narrative identity”)
Using sign language literature to recreate deaf culture is extremely important for deaf people, as more than 90% of deaf children in the US are born to hearing families (Padden and Humphries 2005)
Summary
We explore how sign language artists (deaf storytellers and poets) construct their deaf identities through creative narratives (“deaf narrative identity”). Creative SASL texts highlight issues around deaf culture and identity, audism Through sharing their oppressive painful experiences, deaf people form identities of resistance. This article illustrates how deaf South Africans use creative sign language texts as a way of establishing their deaf narrative identities, both personal and collective. We will introduce and discuss one common plot that appears widely in sign language texts, namely “Man against Monster” (Booker 2004, Sutton-Spence and Kaneko 2016) This Monster can be any form of oppression or control (racism, sexism), but in this article we will focus on the Monsters that emerge from a hegemonic, oppressive, hearing audist world. Deaf people rely on visual processing and have long been called “the people of the eye” (Bauman 2008)
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