“Stories matter, many stories matter”
To ward off the feelings of gloom which arose from the election results, I let the following wise words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from her Ted Talk “The danger of a single story” inspire me:
"Power is the ability to not just tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. [...] The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. [...] They make one story become the only story."
The ‘rhetoric of the single story’, which stands out in the PVV’s party program and seems to appeal to a large part of the Netherlands, needs to be counterbalanced. Not just to argue against the single story, but also to understand the appeal of this rhetoric. After all, there is a story behind every vote.
Chimamanda shares her views through storytelling and writing, but I, as a researcher who aims to identify and understand patterns in cognition, experience and behavior, will take her advice to keep sight of the complex, multifaceted stories of people to heart.
Watch the Ted Talk here
© James Duncan Davidson