Why have students in a Digital Storytelling course interview about Charleston and African American history? In a field so focused on speeding forward, why look back?
One answer is that we never move forward when we do not recognize where we are coming from.
Stories have formidable power in our society. When a young white man walked into a Charleston church on June 17th, 2015, an hour of bible study with women and men who welcomed him could not dislodge the poisonous old narrative that he had learned, a narrative many Americans try to ignore even as it continues to haunt our society. He reportedly said that the black pastor and worshippers he was murdering would "have to go" because, he told the pastor, "you rape our women and are taking over our society." By reciting this story the young white man reiterated the justification for lynching used by racial terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, and added a new chapter to the history--the story--of lynching in the United States.
In a nation of many white spaces and far fewer black spaces, narratives are what dictate which spaces belong to whom. The young man chose to commit this crime in a black space that had been hard won: The Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church was founded to be a place for slaves to worship, then burned down by white citizens, and built again. So what happened this week also added an horrific new chapter to the story of that space. There will be further chapters, but that new chapter cannot be unwritten.
How do we step outside of poisonous narratives? How can we change the stubborn narratives around society's spaces?
I am very critical of suggestions that the digital environment can solve the problems that preexist it. But in the case of persistent, troubling narratives, I teach students that digital storytelling presents hope for real change. I believe it is possible to reimagine and recast stories through digital storytelling, so that over time a narrative can be eclipsed by its own adaptations and remixes, reimagining old stories with new possibilities and envisioning healing immersive spaces.
Humans told stories interactively long before print isolated the storyteller from the audience. The participatory aspects of digital storytelling disrupt the ideas of narrative that have developed in the age of print (an age that some who take the long view of history call the Gutenberg parenthesis.) However, the internet did not create story interactivity; rather, it tapped into our social storytelling drive that had been dormant in the age of print.
One of the beauties of digital storytelling is that it can complicate the authority of the storyteller in many ways.
One answer is that we never move forward when we do not recognize where we are coming from.
Stories have formidable power in our society. When a young white man walked into a Charleston church on June 17th, 2015, an hour of bible study with women and men who welcomed him could not dislodge the poisonous old narrative that he had learned, a narrative many Americans try to ignore even as it continues to haunt our society. He reportedly said that the black pastor and worshippers he was murdering would "have to go" because, he told the pastor, "you rape our women and are taking over our society." By reciting this story the young white man reiterated the justification for lynching used by racial terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, and added a new chapter to the history--the story--of lynching in the United States.
In a nation of many white spaces and far fewer black spaces, narratives are what dictate which spaces belong to whom. The young man chose to commit this crime in a black space that had been hard won: The Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church was founded to be a place for slaves to worship, then burned down by white citizens, and built again. So what happened this week also added an horrific new chapter to the story of that space. There will be further chapters, but that new chapter cannot be unwritten.
How do we step outside of poisonous narratives? How can we change the stubborn narratives around society's spaces?
I am very critical of suggestions that the digital environment can solve the problems that preexist it. But in the case of persistent, troubling narratives, I teach students that digital storytelling presents hope for real change. I believe it is possible to reimagine and recast stories through digital storytelling, so that over time a narrative can be eclipsed by its own adaptations and remixes, reimagining old stories with new possibilities and envisioning healing immersive spaces.
Humans told stories interactively long before print isolated the storyteller from the audience. The participatory aspects of digital storytelling disrupt the ideas of narrative that have developed in the age of print (an age that some who take the long view of history call the Gutenberg parenthesis.) However, the internet did not create story interactivity; rather, it tapped into our social storytelling drive that had been dormant in the age of print.
One of the beauties of digital storytelling is that it can complicate the authority of the storyteller in many ways.
Digital storytelling
- ...allows the audience to vote on, comment on or criticize a story as it is told.
- ...asks us to decide what will occur in the story, or even to become the hero.
- ...changes the atmosphere of the story by telling it transmedia - across multiple media instead of one medium.
- ...can knock the story out of chronological order and leave it open.
- ...redefines literacy and gives voices to many whose perspectives have been suppressed
- ...remixes the story, satirizing, replacing, or multiplying its authorship.
- ...invites continuation; the story is never complete.
In a world of narratives both beautiful and poisonous, I have hope that digital storytelling might help us disrupt historically harmful narratives...but only if we are willing to acknowledge that those old narratives still influence us.
Instructor D. Daly, University of Arizona eSociety Program and School of Information
Reach me at didaly (at) email (dot) arizona (dot) edu
Instructor D. Daly, University of Arizona eSociety Program and School of Information
Reach me at didaly (at) email (dot) arizona (dot) edu
Images:
Header: Photograph of a Young Woman at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. with a Banner, 08/28/1963. The U.S. National Archives.
Middle: A Bureau agent stands between armed groups of whites and Freedmen in this 1868 picture from Harper's Weekly. Library of Congress.
Footer: The early days of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Header: Photograph of a Young Woman at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. with a Banner, 08/28/1963. The U.S. National Archives.
Middle: A Bureau agent stands between armed groups of whites and Freedmen in this 1868 picture from Harper's Weekly. Library of Congress.
Footer: The early days of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.