As an undergraduate student at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, I was in a yearlong lab called Communication for Social Change. We travelled to various parts of India to meet different practitioners working with marginalised communities within villages as well as metropolitan cities. We came to understand that the main objective of communication for social change was to give voice to the voiceless.
The idea of giving voice to the voiceless is rooted in the field of anthropology and ethnography, which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a way to study and document the diversity of human cultures and societies. One of the earliest and most influential proponents of this idea was the anthropologist Franz Boas, who emphasized the importance of understanding cultures on their own terms and giving voice to marginalized or oppressed groups who had historically been excluded from mainstream academic discourse. Boas and other anthropologists of his time recognized that Western society had often suppressed the voices and perspectives of non-Western cultures and marginalized groups within their own societies. In response, they sought to create a more inclusive and diverse approach to anthropology that prioritized the perspectives and experiences of those who had been historically marginalized.
While the intent of this methodology is well-meaning and still widely practiced and taught in various disciplines, framing it in this way reinforces the hierarchy it seeks to address by situating power in the same framework that it exists.
Trinh T. Minh-ha speaks of allyship which equalises these positions while acknowledging the differences in positionality.
“When you decide to speak nearby, rather than speak about, the first thing you need to do is to acknowledge the possible gap between you and those who populate your film… You can only speak nearby, in proximity… which requires that you deliberately suspend meaning… This allows the other person to come in and fill that space as they wish.” Minh-ha, Artforum
In “Whose Story Is This?”, Rebecca Solnit explores the relationship between storytelling and power. She argues that the act of telling stories is inherently political, as it shapes our understanding of the world and the power dynamics that operate within it. She argues that those in power have historically been the ones to control the narrative and determine whose stories are told and whose are silenced. This has resulted in the erasure of many voices and experiences, particularly those of women, people of color, and other marginalized groups. Solnit calls for a shift in power dynamics and an expansion of the stories that are told and heard, to include a wider range of perspectives and experiences.
Through her writing, Solnit challenges the notion of a single “true” story and instead emphasizes the importance of multiple perspectives and the value of a diversity of voices. This echoes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TED Talk titled “The Danger of a Single Story,” which has since become a seminal work on the importance of diverse and complex storytelling.
Solnit argues that by acknowledging the power dynamics at play in storytelling, we can work towards a more equitable and just society, one in which all voices are heard and all stories are valued. The very significant shift here lies in the power of listening. Everyone has a voice and everyone has stories to tell. Power dictates whose stories are listened to. It is this power of listening that I would like to develop and adopt as practice.
References:
Adichie, C. N. (2009, July). The danger of a single story. TEDGlobal. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story
Boas, F. (1889). “On Alternating Sounds.” American Anthropologist, 2(4), 47-53.
Solnit, R. (2019). Whose Story Is This?: Old Conflicts, New Chapters. Haymarket Books.
Trinh, T. T. (1991). “Outside in Inside out.” Artforum International, 29(2), 96-119.