I found this lecture fascinating in the context of storytelling; in how we tell our own stories about ourselves (to ourselves and to the world) and how we tell the stories of others to ourselves through intersecting and divergent identity signifiers. Appiah talks of personal and social identity in a way that reminded me of the question posed in the essay by Razia Aziz “Feminism and the challenge of racism” from Session Two: “What is identity for?” In Aziz’s context, this question is posed in relation to the political act of identity. In the context of this lecture, I have reflected on the more personal use of the story of identity in understanding who I am, or rather, where I come from.
The question “Where are you from?” is one that, whilst commonplace and seemingly innocuous, carries with it an othering quality, as Appiah relates early in the lecture. It presupposes the answer: ‘not from around here’. I had my own experiences of this growing up. Whilst I looked like most of the people around me where I was raised, I never sounded like any of the children at my school. Nor did I sound like members of my mother’s family in London. My mother, the eldest child in her family, had received elocution lessons at a school she was sent to as a teenager, whereas her many siblings had not. In a similar act of adaptation, my father’s father had taught himself to speak “properly” (as he saw it) by listening to voices on the radio, to improve his chances at being accepted into a Grammar School, and so passed on to my father not the accent of his parents, but one that was acquired. The result of these adaptations for my sisters and I is an accent that is an amalgam, somewhat unplaceable, not being one thing or another and not mirroring voices of our local surroundings or wider family and has therefore been a voice perpetually out of place, be it with peers growing up, or family members who have distinct regional accents.
My point in telling the mini biography of my voice relates to how I feel about growing up in a non-religious family, and the generational story of this. ‘Atheist’ or ‘Agnostic’ are not terms that I feel comfortable with in describing myself, as they simplify the generational story behind my religious positionality. I feel deeply connected to the story of my grandparents’ relationship, for example; the societal difficulties encountered at the time and their own personal connections with religion. My grandfather was a self-proclaimed Agnostic from a Protestant family, my grandmother a devout Catholic with a worldview that was radically liberal for her generation. Their different interpretations of where they come from religiously have always affected me in my own understanding of my relationship to religion and faith. These stories are an important part of my story and cannot be encompassed by a term such as ‘Atheist’, even though I would say that I am not a believer.
These stories, of why I grew up sounding a certain way, and how my relationship to faith was formed as a child, involve many characters and interpretations. They are stories retold and adapted. Appiah says, “The story of texts, is the story of readers and their interpretations”.
In the context of my work as a lecturer with performance students, storytelling in the context of identity could work well to explore questions of one’s own positionality, whilst also considering how a character is represented through storytelling. This approach to identity through the multiplicity of storytelling could be a very effective introduction to both character development and storytelling through character, in relation to identity and to change, with students developing concepts for performance projects. Perhaps a storytelling workshop (‘How did I get here?’) where the multiplicity of backgrounds and their formations is shared and explored together in a group.
2 replies on “Kwame Anthony Appiah – Reith Lecture”
Your discussion of storytelling here echoes all of our posts I feel, which seem to have an awareness of subjective stories, that is at once subject to or aware of objective assumptions (for example your discussion of voice). Sometimes I find, that over-codifying objective stories, this awareness of homogenous ‘dominant’ culture is the thing we all struggle with most, even though it does not technically exist – we are all subjective of course, as indeed stories and storytelling tell us. It makes me think of Stuart Hall, who writes/says on the inherent complexity of identity, and indeed, this is what accents are – they are rarely straightforwardly indicative, especially in London. You discussion of character exploration is interesting here too, and I enjoyed your discussion of your grandparents which echoes Appiah’s exploration of religions culturally.
You’re right about the ‘where are you from?’ question being loaded because of the following assumption (often a negative stereotype) that is greeted with the answer. Personally speaking, I was born in London and have lived here all my life, but I always say that I’m Nigerian when asked ‘where are you from’ – however, I’m greeted with ‘but you don’t sound like you’re from Nigeria’ so echoing what Claire wrote above our voice can play a huge part of our identity and therefore other people’s assumption.