Negotiation and solidarity at cultural borders in sport: A narrative inquiry into the lived experience of Deaflympians

This narrative inquiry explores structural tensions and institutional frictions that emerge at the intersection of D/deaf and disability sport, and reimagines D/deaf-affirmed narratives within sport contexts. The theoretical framework was developed through a dialogue between the concept of the “Third Space” and critical deaf studies. To inquire into the negotiation of in-between cultural spaces, we engage with the lived stories of two South Korean Deaflympians. Both have trained under the Paralympic-centered disability sport system and have worked as Adapted Physical Activity instructors at a provincial disability association. Following the narrative inquiry tradition of Clandinin and Connelly, researchers engaged in conversations with Deaf athletes and gathered materials such as official documents, media posts, and personal archives to compose field texts. We collaboratively developed timelines, summary tables, and interim research texts based on the three-dimensional narrative inquiry framework (temporality, place, and sociality), and composed the final research texts in a first-person voice. A D/deaf-affirmed hybrid identity, integrated with an athletic identity, is represented in the narratives both as a discursive sign of destabilizing stereotypical discourses and as transformative actions on audiocentric reality. The ambivalence of D/deaf vulnerability not only reveals audiocentric privilege but also creates space for interdependent care and collective responsibility. Engaging in D/deaf-affirmed praxis in sport contributes to operationalizing the intersectionality framework as one of the spokes in the wheel while also advancing axiological practices.