Vers une approche plus fluide de la culture et de l’histoire des sourds : quelques réflexions sur le rôle des organisations sportives pour les sourds dans la naissance d’une culture des sourds en Belgique

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In contemporary disability studies, questions with regard to disability culture and disability identity occupy an important place. Generally speaking, the notions ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ refer to the manifold and divergent attempts and attitudes of persons with disabilities to resist the oppressive and often medically inspired strategies and discourses, which depict the person with disability as a dependent and pathological individual. Also, in disability history, the notions ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ have proven successful in order to examine whether, how and to what extent people with disabilities have continuously opposed the medicalized picture of a helpless and destitute individual. In line with this overall interest in ‘identity’-formation processes, we, in this article, would like to explore whether and how at the turn of the twentieth century there emerged a deaf identity in Belgium. Inspired by the work of the French scholar Séguillon, we particularly are interested in the role played by sports in the construction of a deaf culture. By tracing the emergence and development of the deaf sport movement in Belgium, we, on the one hand, would like to sketch out how the Belgian deaf population resisted the normalizing procedures in education and society at large. On the other hand, we also would like to question the idea of a general deaf identity by focusing on particular internal differences and frictions. The extensive archival records held by the Robert Dresse Center will form the material basis of this research.