Thinking Activity: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This post is a response to the views shared here

What I really liked out of the three Ted Talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was her talk on the dangers of a single story. She explains how a single story about someone can soon become a generalization and can cloud our understanding regarding a person or place. Her ideas reminded me of the Foucoultian idea of power and knowledge. Our understanding of the 'Other' is constructed by the generalizations we have made regarding that place or person. Here's how, according to Adichie, we create a single story:

"Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again."

What happens as a consequence of this is what we call a generalization of an identity. This happens not just in terms of demographic parameter but also in terms of gender, race, and other markers of identity. I would like to share a personal experience here. So, before I was even introduced to the texts of African Literature, I sensed that it would be about how they have suffered through out colonial rule; and also about how they fight for it. This might have been because I was already introduced to Post Colonialism before I read African literature and therefore words like 'suffering', 'racism', 'imperial injustice', etc were already a part of my understanding of that literary sphere. Now that I think about it, it's quite intriguing because I'm also a Post Colonial identity. Being an Indian, I've also heard and read about the colonial history and struggle for independence in my country. And yet, my mind has been full of, what Adichie calls, "a patronizing, well meaning pity". 

But when that story was proved wrong by works like The Swamp Dwellers by Wole Soyinka (wherein he talks more about the issue of tradition and modernity within the developing Nigerian society instead of the usual narratives of 'black, natives' fighting for Uhuru [freedom] from their 'white, foreign masters'). 

Conclusively, what I learnt was that in order to establish what we call 'universal brotherhood' we must come out of our 'single stories', i.e. our generalizations, biases and presumptions as well as generalizations. And literature can be a great help in doing so.

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