Storytelling for Social Justice: Reconceptualizing Invisibility, Legitimacy, and Self-Censorship via Stories of Failure

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building upon scholarship on stories – including oral-history and oral-tradition – this article considers often-silenced narratives in the form of stories of failures. Comparison between empirical research and qualitative methodologies highlight value of fictional storytelling, which has been mobilized by researchers to protect the anonymity of vulnerable groups and the intersectionally marginalized in research. While hierarchies in power lead to self-censorship and self-delegitimization as observed by bell hooks and Paulo Freire, stories of failure may resist social pressures to present successes – which in themselves have led to widely disseminated cases of academic fraud. Additionally, stories of failures may help acknowledge Kemmis and Mezirow’s considerations of negative emotions as valid, toward resolution, resistance, and social change. Stories may help elucidate the hidden curriculum, which confounds efforts toward social justice under Rawlsian theories. Lastly, these stories may elucidate the impacts of interest convergence under critical race theory, towards the promotion of social justice intersectionally.