Favourite Feminist of the Week - Chimamanda Adichie

I'm really looking forward to introducing some of the most inspirational, interesting people to you; who also happen to have great ideas about social justice.

One of those people is author and activist Chimamanda Adichie. I first learned about her through a friend who is taking a "Race and Ethnicity"-class in my department (American Culture and Literature). She made me watch the video "The danger of a single story" where Chimamanda shares her thoughts on how vulnerable we are in the face of a story. 

The point Chimamanda makes is pretty simple: stories (not only in books but also told by media and our social surrounding) structure what and how we think of ourselves and of others. It gets more complicated though when there is only one story prevalent, when you "show people as one thing. As only one thing. Over and over again. And that is what they will become."

She herself was confronted by such a single story when she went for her studies to the U.S. and realized that among the people brought up in the U.S., there existed a single story on Africa, a single story of "catastrophe". In the context of well established power-structures it becomes crucial how, by whom and how many stories are being told. Drawing from her own experience, Chimamanda explains that because of its political, economical as well as cultural dominance, there are many different stories about the U.S. 

Quite the contrary is the poor presence in the "West" of the diversity of the African continent concerning its different people, countries, classes, religions and conditions. The single story of Africa as well as any other single story therefore is always an incomplete one. It creates stereotypes and thereby robs people of their dignity.

I specifically love this term of the "single story", Chimamanda Adichie coins, because it brings together so many abstract concepts and puts them in an understandable way. She basically de-essentializes our knowledge of "others". And she provides us with a valuable vocabulary to describe how "discourse" or "stories" function in our own societies. 

In White German society, for instance, there exist single stories on so-called integration, on muslims and especially on women wearing a headscarf (for a very clear and islamophobic example look at this Focus report). Unanimously society tells over and over again the same story of women who wear the headscarf as being automatically oppressed. Without ever asking just these women what they think about this issue. The single story obviously takes no interest in proving veracity.  Looking at this particular single story of the oppressed muslim woman from the "outside", from  Turkey, it seems even more ridiculous. Unlike friends telling me that I would probably encounter many "traditional" or "oppressed" women; this is just not the case. Just like in Germany patriarchy is very strong in this society. But that's only one side. I meet strong, open-minded women everyday. No need for a single story.

 

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Also watch Chimamanda Adichies speech on feminism here.