Storytelling as a political act

Towards a politics of complexity and counter-hegemonic narratives

Dados Bibliográficos

ID13004079
AutoresKathleen Erwin (0000-0003-1785-6457, Durban University of Technology, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume13
Fascículo3
Páginas237-252
Data de publicação2020-12-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical African Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2040-7211 • E-ISSN: 2168-1392
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/21681392.2020.1850304
OpenAlexW3113099936
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas32

Making accessible research findings through forms of storytelling is a useful method for activist and public scholarship. This article explores these possibilities through a project on migration and gender in the city of Durban, in South Africa. The research project collected oral histories of migrant women’s experiences in the city, and, in collaboration with artists, wove these narratives into a theatre performance titled The Last Country. The Last Country used an anti-essentialist politics to complicate, disrupt and make messy exclusionary hegemonic narratives on migration and gender that circulated within the contemporary social fabric. Storytelling as a political act is made visible through a reflection on the storytelling processes in the project. Building a chorus of voices, not just in the stories performed but in the design, data collection and analysis stage of a research project, is a productive and critical method for developing storytelling as an intentional political act. Public storytelling, such as The Last Country, used counter-hegemonic narratives to disrupt, disarticulate and expand dominant storylines, so that we may reimagine anew alternative ways of seeing and being in the city

Art · Essentialism · Hegemony · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Storytelling · Gender Studies · Law · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · South African History and Culture