Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
Tag: Narrative
Utopia and Detective Stories
Utopias resemble detective stories because both derive from an unlimited faith in reason. Both dramatize the riddle to create a story about finding the answer. One shows the solution to a crime and the other the solution to Crime.
Morson, Gary. The Long and Short of It: From Aphorism to Novel
You’ll never understand how politics works if you don’t understand Anna Nicole Smith
After a lecture, David Rieff, perhaps America’s most important writer on humanitarian issues, made this surprising comment: “You’ll never understand how politics works if you don’t understand Anna Nicole Smith.” What could Anna Nicole Smith have to do with politics—or brain scans, for that matter? Abundant clues to the answer could be found on any TV channel that night. There were viewers calling in, recounting their emotional responses to Anna Nicole’s life and death. Most of them were women, mourning her, idolizing her. To others, she was a gold digger, an empty-headed celebrity, a celebrity only because she was a celebrity. Her life and death resonated so profoundly with so many people because she exemplified a remarkable variety of narratives. Those narratives exist outside the body – in our culture – and inside the body – in the very building blocks of our brains. David Rieff was completely right—understanding the importance of Anna Nicole Smith will help us understand politics.
Lakoff, George. The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics