Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story
Nov 6th, 2009 by Daniel Mundeva
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born and raised in Eastern Nigeria, and is today one of the most powerful young voices in African literature. In this talk she identifies how story telling has the power to influence our understanding of people and places. Chimamanda thoughtfully reveals the danger of a single story and how it creates vulnerability. She presents herself not only as a victim of a single story but also a “victimizer” of people she had had a single story about.
Chimamanda points out that a single story is created by showing the subject/people “as one and only one thing.” She suggests that the power of a story lies in how it is told, who tells it, when it is told and how many times the story is told. Based on the fact that a person is multi-faceted and is made up of many stories, having a single story creates stereotypes which as in Chimamanda’s definition, is not necessarily untrue but simply “incomplete.”
This presentation addresses the central pillar of the creation of “the other.” This is because, often (if not always), we use stories to acquire knowledge of places we have not been to, or people we have not met. It is therefore through stories that “orientalism” or – in Professor Edward Said’s own words – “the creation of an ideal other” (Edward Said; On Orientalism) becomes possible. Chimamanda points out that a story follows the principle of “Nkali”, an Igbo word meaning “to be greater than another”, and this is the principle of power. This same concept (of power of representation) is well obeyed in orientalism, that which guides the representation of the other. Chimamanda describes power not just as the ability to tell a story of another person, but to make that story the definitive one. She gives an example of how America’s cultural and economic power enabled stories written in the USA to be the dominant ones in literature. Even when we look beyond literature, we can still see the story of the West being regarded as the universal truth. We see this perceprtion very often in the development studies. The “Western” definition of development and civilization for example, has been hugely regarded as the accurate one and that the rest of the world ought to adapt to it. And as we have seen in class, new heated debates are rising to discuss whether the real cause of today’s inequality is the “underdevelopment” or “overdevelopment” of the “North.” But in the past it had always been presented to us that underdevelopment is the only problem that needed to be addressed.
Another thing that comes up in Chimamanda’s talk which is worthy pointing out and one that we have had class discussions over, is the ability of the subaltern (Africans in Chimamanda’s case) to speak for themselves. The subaltern is often seen as “unable to speak for themselves” and “waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.” This brings back the concept that people in the south are a “white man’s burden,” unable to develop without the white man’s pity. This is not just a single story, but a single and incomplete story because it lacks both cultural, historical and social sides of a “southern” man. The way to go about solving this could be to minimise (if not to completely remove) the mainstream’s dominance especially in the media, and allow the subaltern to tell their stories in their own “authentic” way. It has to be told in their own way because often the subaltern is bound to “speak with the elite’s tongue,” to present a story that the elite want them to present. This therefore leads to the audience hearing the same single story although might be by different presenters.
Therefore, I believe, what Chimamanda’s talk suggests is that, in order to counter orientalism, stereotyping or any other wrong representations of a people, multiple stories (and not only different versions of a similar story) must be heard.
7 Responses to “Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story”
I really enjoyed Chimamanda’s speech. I like that she speaks to a wide range of topics we discussed in class and specifically to Orientalism (even if she does not refer to Orientalism per se when she argues against a single story). However, I think she is more an accurate example of Babha’s hybrid than a personification of Spivak’s subaltern.
Also, the example of the young boy hired by her parents during her childhood is really interesting because it portrays how “subalternity” is not static and varies across scales. For example on an international scale, Chimamanda’s Nigerian origins, may make her a subaltern. However, she is not a subaltern at home, in Nigeria. . First, because she is part of an elite, of a privileged class within Nigeria. Second, because she describes in details how she grew up with cultural models (books) of western culture. Still, I think the question of whether she is a subaltern, an hybrid or even a post-colonial subject is more complex. She does not frame her identity around negative views of the African other depicted in western countries. She explains that she was never confronted to those negative and condescending views before actually traveling and studying in the U.S. In other words, she does not seem to suffer from the self-alienation, the self-division described by Frantz Fannon, or the stolen humanism portrayed by Achille Mbembe.
Furthermore, I think Chimamanda speaks to the inevitability of hybridity, to the fact that there might not be any genuine culture when speaking of how Nigerian youth listens to the same music as Americans, of how they share the same concerns, etc. However, I think that she emphasized those similarities in order to break the barrier of stereotypes (to which she refers as the single story). This way, I would argue that she iis strategic in an anti-essentialist way. To one point she even talks about sharing the different stories in order to “empower” and “repair” the dignity of the people. In other words, to re-humanize them.
To go back to the question of the subaltern, I don’t think, however, that she pretends to speak for the subaltern. Her speech is very personalized, she tells her story, but at the same time she calls for those multiple “stories”. In other words, she uses her privileged status (to be able to talk at the center) in order to urge her audience to open its ears and listen to different stories. On a final note, I think she is very inspiring because she tries to give a voice to the subaltern.
“India, Africa, and other countries”
This woman is fantastic.
This makes me think of how often people refer to Africa as a country, rather than a continent made up of 61 territories with massive cultural, demographic, economic, political, ecological (etc.) diversity. It shows how easy it is for media, NGOs and individuals, in their “patronizing well-meaning pity”, create and reinforce inaccurate tropes of what “Africa” is like. The entire continent is not a World Vision infomercial.
This weird dynamic of “authenticity” that she describes is interesting. The idea that people from outside the continent can dictate what it is to be “truly African” based on all the charity functions they have gone to is really strange. Because charities are mostly concerned with solving problems, this makes us miss out on so much good if this is our only exposure to Africa. How can we treat people as equals and form partnerships if we only see them as people who have cute children but always need our help?
What an incredible video! Having just read the “Imperialism Within” article, I found this video to be an illustration of some of the problems that arise from “speaking for” other people as well as the importance of really listening to what “preferably unheard” voices have to say. Chimamanda clearly demonstrates the way the often reiterated, single perspective stories that do little to foster intercultural understanding. This video made me very aware of my own complacency in listening to and retelling the “one story” for what might be termed “cheap sympathy” purposes. Obviously, I’m not proud of this, but when you have learned to see things in a particular way, it can be difficult to see the flaws in your own perspective. Thanks for this insightful reality check… I think it will be a video I watch more than once.
I really enjoyed watching Chimamanda’s speach as well. I felt similar to Jennifer during this video as it made me reflect upon my own tendency to adhere to ‘one story’ of others.
I was reminded of my first trip outside of Canada. When I was 14 my best friend and I began planning and fund raising for a trip to Kenya. I remember distinctly boarding that plane, landing in Nairobi and feeling like truly, we were here to save the world. Looking back I realize I had not only grouped ‘the world’ or to be more specific ‘the world in need of saving’ into the population of Kenya, but I believed that the world did indeed need saving, by someone like me. I remember driving through villages, and speaking to people, playing with children and remarking that truly Africa looked the way I thought it had, the way I’d seen it on TV. In the villages I was in the children did really walk around without shoes and holes in their clothes, the houses were made out of mud and the women carried baskets of fruit on their heads. And yet something was entirely different than I’d expected, people were respectable, they had values and conflicts, they were happy, they were human. I remember reflecting on the plane back to Canada, that maybe I couldn’t save them, maybe they didn’t need to be saved.
At 14 I had bought into the media’s portrayal of the ‘one story’ of Africa. I was guilty of ethnocentrism and orientalism. Yet on that airplane I experienced a small moment, one of many in my life where I feel like my world was shaped and then reshaped because of my interactions with the subaltern. I completely agree with Chimamanda that our world views can change if we are exposed to another story. I believe that when the subaltern speak for themselves, they become more human, and their story will change our own.
This is an excellent video and many parallels can be drawn with concepts we have discussed in class. What I admire most is that throughout the talk she takes into account her own stories and stories she had heard about others. What I felt at the end of the talk was that she had painted herself using multiple narratives, and this helped me see the similarities, and understand the differences. What she does on an individual level through the talk is also what she would like to see done in regards to understanding places.
The first thing that this really relates to is Orientalism. It is one thing to create or describe an “other,” it is much worse though to create that other using a single story. The use of a single stories create many of the binaries used in Orientalist thinking. Her point that stories are related to power has importance in historical contexts in which colonialism occurred. Colonial powers would have seen themselves as being diverse, civilized and creative peoples, who had many facets to describe their civilizations. Yet the “other,” could be perceived superficially and that would be adequate. One uniform description sufficed to describe them, and the colonizer could go and create a place capable of generating more stories only if he colonized. The point she made about, the arrows of the First Nations peoples, or Failed States in Africa, were characteristic of orientalist thinkers, in the sense that they were only able to see perceived problems of the Oriental without acknowledging their presence in the life of the oriental.
The other thing to talk about is how single stories are used to illustrate the existence of subaltern expression. As Adichie notes, one negative story can form an image that is incapable of incorporating elements that don’t seem to mesh with what is known. One subaltern speaker, who may speak about a huge struggle, can easily come to represent a large population, and this in turn subjugates an entire population. Those with power can easily decide what individual stories they would like to share with the public, this was often the case in colonial times and I believe is still the case, especially in the mainstream media.
This ties into development very well. On one hand individuals who engage with development in foreign places only have single, stereotypical stories of those places, and thus perceive them as such. If development is unable to see many intertwined realties in a place then it will have problems introducing effective changes. Development groups also love single stories, either to describe a dire situation, or to illustrate a successful development project. If one story is being used for the latter objective, then development initiatives with very limited success can be justified even for whole nations where consequences could be detrimental. This is common to microfinance, and when we have the class debate it will be interesting to compare individual success stories with the success of entire nations or communities in using microcredit.
On another note there is another video I found that speaks to something similar to this, it deals more with describing how one worldview is truly subjective and according to the speaker it is the notion of thinking you are universally correct and know what is right for everyone that leads to clashes between many different groups.
http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html
I find it hard to be optimistic about giving voice or listening to the subaltern. Even at UBC the prospect of listening or providing the room for the ‘other’ to express themselves has been difficult. One of my classes in second year was on African Literature. First off it was taught by a white European professor, which I found a bit ironic at the time. Second, while it provided a critical account of past colonial discourses and narratives, as well as gave room for some African writers, it seemed that the same story was being repeated, despite reading 6 different novels. The story was always of the wrong done by colonial adventures and how the people suffered and how capitalism stops any progress forward. The video discusses the importance of telling more than one story, so as to move away from “cheap sympathy”. I think this is a very valid point, however a difficult one since while all stories are different, they often have the same theme and outline. Although the telling of the truths of colonialism is important and must be unveiled, it is true that the repetition of the same story made me sympathize for a while, but after the 5th novel, the story sadly and disappointedly only made me annoyed and almost indifferent. I am embarrassed and disappointed in myself to feel that way, however it would seem that in order for the subaltern to be heard, and not pitied and eventually not ignored that other forms of expressing might be necessary. What these are or what other stories can be told I really don’t know…
I think Chimamanda’s discussion emphasizes an important point–I particularly appreciate how she speaks of these single stories as incomplete as opposed to “untrue”, because it draws attention from the search for a single, universally applicable ‘truth’ to the acknowledgment that what we understand as knowledge and history is ultimately one narrative out of many others.
However, I would like to include the importance of how the stories are told into the discussion. The videos we have posted on the class blog articulate narratives in their own. I find the medium of film especially interesting because it involves the gaze, the act of “looking”. When I gathered ideas for analyzing the documentary I posted, I came across discussions on the role of the gaze in making claims to knowledge. In film, and in conducting research, one should be aware of both the subject and object of observation. What is being observed? Who is doing the observing? Geographers Alison Blunt and Jane Wills claim that the gaze produces voyeuristic and distanced claims to knowledge whenever it fails to acknowledge the involvement of the researcher.
In an art history class I came across Laura Mulvey’s ideas that analyzes the ways in which cinema is gendered. She contends that in film, male characters drive the plot, while female characters appear in the frames to be visually consumed. Through the use of certain camera angles, viewers, regardless of their gender, are prompted to identify with the male protagonist. So when looking at the videos of this blog (especially those that are produced), asking how the characters are represented in the space of the frames, and, more generally, how the story is told, may glean insight into the power dynamics between those involved in the writing of the story.