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 th...