Alternative epistemology – Storytelling
Summers Ding
People are in contact with diverse information and knowledge every day. However,
what we know might be only a small part of reality because of the limitations on how we
create, gather and share knowledge. Therefore, exploring new or different ways of knowing
can enrich our understandings of the world around us, the nature of humanity and the
society we are in.
In this paper, I focus on storytelling as an alternative epistemology and learning
method which could contribute to a more justified society. I first describe the need for
alternative ways of learning, such as storytelling, by analyzing four main issues presented
by currently dominant knowledge systems. Following my exploration of these critical
issues around mainstream knowledge systems and how they impact both knowledge owners
and receivers, I discuss why storytelling presents a powerful alternative way of knowing. I
frame the discussion around how storytelling can help to empower marginalized people and
knowledge by ensuring their voices can be heard and valued. I also explain that storytelling
can inspire people to challenge the problematic status quo of excluding and erasing certain
voices and knowledge.
Woven into the exploration of these two key functions of storytelling are the examples
of residential school histories as recounted by Indigenous people who experienced them
firsthand, and the Hollaback! social movement which mobilizes storytelling to address
public harassment of women and LGBTQ persons. Based on these examples, I scrutinize
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how storytelling can facilitate a non-hegemonic way of knowing, and can be a crucial part
of transformative adult education for building a more equitable and just society.
Why is an alternative knowledge system needed?
While thinking about learning, most people would choose to obtain knowledge from
authorized individuals or organizations whom they assume to be the most knowledgeable.
For instance, they might choose to take courses taught by educators, read articles written by
professionals, or browse newspapers and reports from well-known news institutions.
However, pursuing knowledge in this manner enhances the perceived value of 'common'
knowledge and valorizes information that comes from sources recognized as authoritative
and knowledgeable. Relying only on authoritative knowledge sources can be problematic
because it does not acknowledge or value thoughts and knowledge that have been excluded
or marginalized.
In this section, I briefly discuss various understandings of 'knowledge'. I then describe
four main issues presented by the currently dominant knowledge system, which privileges'
neutral', scientific and western world views that forward knowledge as neutral and
universal. These issues include restrictions on knowledge generation and dissemination; a
potential lack of authenticity of widespread information in learning encounters; limited
access to knowledge for marginalized peoples; and a potential to marginalize other
knowledge owners, which leads to their lower self-esteem and confidence.
People crave knowledge and spend much time and energy gaining it, because our
underlying beliefs about the nature of knowledge can strongly shape our understanding of
the world, our values, and our perspectives on how, what and why people learn. Knowledge
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has been considered as the access to truth, skills, and general rules, and has been portrayed
as the "way of being latched on to a fact" by Nagel in a video from Wireless Philosophy
(2016). In the Oxford dictionary, knowledge is defined straightforwardly as "the
information, understanding and skills that you gain through education or experience" (n.d.).
All of these perspectives forward the widely accepted idea that knowledge is 'objective' and
'neutral'. Yet multiple examples and scholars have contested whether knowledge can ever be
viewed as 'neutral', or should be considered as partial, situated, and often contested.
According to Stone-Mediatore (2013), the "ruling narrative logics" reinforce the value
of already highly valued knowledge, and disempower knowledge from excluded and
silenced people whose knowledge contradicts what the powerful groups want the public to
know (p. 135), such as Indigenous people, or homeless people. As a consequence, in terms
of access to and dissemination of knowledge, the excluded and less powerful knowledge
would remain disproportionately invisible in the mainstream educational channels, leading
to the knowledge generated and spread to be prejudiced instead of "neutral, objective, and
singularly true" (Lemekes, 2018, p. 1). By providing "partial and provisional" knowledge
only (Arocena, Göransson, & Sutz, 2018, p. 51), the current knowledge system would
continuously prevent the masses from interacting with the world with a more
comprehensive understanding of society.
Restrictions on Knowledge Generation and Dissemination
When people who produce knowledge need to follow specific restrictions from others
who are more powerful such as employers and decision-makers, knowledge producers and
disseminators may also face constraints like rules and policies, which prevent them from
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offering more holistic content.
Such limitation is not unusual, especially in educational institutions. When talking
about "moving into the university domain" in the dialect of knowledge democracy, Hall (as
cited in Hall & Tandon, 2015, p. 369) suggested that participatory research can valorize the
knowledge of plebs by working with the communities, and seeing individuals whose
experience would affect or be affected by the research as "stakeholders" rather than
"researched" (PRIA, n.d, 3 & p. 6). Despite the fact that participatory research could
support knowledge democracy and help universities gain a more holistic understanding of
what communities know and need, and despite the many years of efforts, it was hard to
persuade universities of the epistemological value of community-based research and
partnerships. This is because that the exploration and teaching of participatory research
contradicts to schools and departments' "main interest [… in] keeping things going" only
(Hall & Tandon, 2015, p. 369). Therefore, the department of adult education and
community development of the University of Toronto refused to let Hall teach about it and
offered "no support or funding" (Hall & Tandon, 2015, p. 369). Consequently, this form of
research remained excluded from universities until recent years (Hall & Tandon, 2015, p.
369).
Lack of authenticity of widespread information in learning encounters
The decision of the universities to exclude participatory research approaches hindered
the generation and dissemination of more knowledge about research methods within adult
education. Another example of elitist control of the flow and nature of knowledge can be
seen in Western reporting of labour conditions in cotton-growing regions in China. In this
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context, decision-makers and authoritative people or groups could hide or distort part of the
truth when the reality did not contribute to their interests. Elitist superiority derived from
their educational backgrounds, political power, or social status improved their credibility
and knowledge-authority, with the result that most of the masses believed in them, even
when the authenticity of the information from these elites could not be guaranteed.
To elaborate on this example, in 2021, multiple reports from Western countries
criticized China's government for forcing a multitude of people to work in Xinjiang cotton
farms with low income and severe working conditions (e.g. BBC News, 2021; The
Guardian, 2021; The New York Times, 2021). These reports were mainly from Western
mainstream news organizations and well-known politicians. However, according to my
friend who lives in Xinjiang and therefore may know the reality better than these critics,
most of whom have never been to Xinjiang, these cotton pickers could earn more than
white-collar workers, especially during the picking season. In addition, the cotton farms do
not demand the reported high numbers of labourers since machines have primarily replaced
human labourers. Nevertheless, instead of collecting and hearing the voices of the people
who know the reality better, the western reporters chose to report what they thought was
happening in Xinjiang based on their assumptions, and kept repeating to each other to
stigmatize the image of China's government and therefore affect China's reputation. With
further examination, the reports from various agencies were shown to be inconsistent, as
the number of forced cotton pickers reported by The Guardian (Davidson, 2020, December
15) was "more than half a million" (para. 1), while The New York Times (Goodman, Wang
& Paton, 2021, July 2) indicated that "a million [people …] were deployed as forced labor"
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(para. 10).
These reports, which distorted China's cotton labourers' working experience,
successfully evoked anger towards China's government and concern for the labourers. In
other words, with the overwhelming reports about the brutal image of China, the majority
of the Western public was persuaded to believe what was reported by politicians and news
organizations without questioning, even though there were no pictures or interview
recordings included to prove the authenticity of these reports. Therefore, the voices of those
who know the reality have been continuously silenced and contested, due to the failure to
fit what most of the Western population believed. What happened in this affair resonates
well with what Bui (2018) elicited, "accepted knowledge fits within accepted norms, certain
issues and voices are silenced and marginalized whilst others accorded importance" (as
cited in Lemkes, 2018, p. 1). In this case, these reports became political tools to ensure that
well-known knowledge is the one the dominant groups want the masses to know and
believe, whereas the voices that fail to serve the dominant groups' will to condemn China's
human rights would be muted on purpose. In other words, the groups at the higher level of
the hierarchy could decide what kinds of knowledge are valuable and should be known, to
better engender the top-down power to manipulate the masses' minds. Therefore, it became
difficult for people to distinguish which knowledges are authentic and complete and which
ones are beliefs with fragments or even false information.
Limited Access to Knowledge
In addition to the restrictions and authenticity of knowledge from authoritative people
or groups, access to knowledge, from both academic and economic perspectives, is another
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issue of the current knowledge system. As Piron (2021) foregrounded in the interview about
participatory research, with the lack of the skills to use computers properly and access
academic websites, doctoral students and even professors in Haiti failed to know "the
richness of the scientific webs." This failure restricted people in Haiti from the opportunity
to learn and use web-based information for their further studies. Moreover, even though
access to digital academic sources eventually became widespread in Haiti, not everyone
could understand the knowledge posted on these websites due to the language used.
Because of the "linguistic dependence on 'the colonial languages,'" like English and French,
in research and academic articles, people who do not know these languages would not be
able to understand the meaning and the theories the articles refer to (Ndlove-Gatsheni,
2018, p. 27). In addition, according to Gallagher, Johnson, O'Dowd, Barret & Richardson
(n.d.), the language used in these scientific papers "may contain academic language,
including jargon and technical terms, that is difficult for non-specialists to understand" (p.
5). This difficult language renders academic and scientific papers intricate, causing nonprofessional learners to be excluded from the opportunities of becoming more
knowledgeable.
Furthermore, because of the popularity of "the colonial languages" (Ndlove-Gatsheni,
2018, p. 27) and the "overused jargon in academia" (Gallagher, Johnson, O'Dowd, Barret &
Richardson, n.d., p. 5), learners who want to be heard and included in the academic field
"may be required to mimic" to use these assumed valuable languages (Gaventa & Cornwall,
2022, p. 3). The continuous use of colonial language and academic terminologies to share
ideas and thoughts on scientific websites perpetuates the inequality of access to knowledge.
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Therefore, people like those who do not know, and do not have the opportunity to learn
these professional languages, would be further prevented from gaining knowledge.
When it comes to universities, academic limitations could also be interweaved with
financial restrictions. According to Arocena, Göransson & Sutz (2018), higher educational
institutions have "high barriers to entrance- whether academic or monetary (and the two are
often intertwined)" (p. 182). For example, at the University of Toronto, besides the strict
academic enrollment requirement of a B+ average in a related undergraduate major, the
tuition of the Masters of Education is 10070 CAD per year for domestic students and
around 40000 CAD per year for international students
(https://planningandbudget.utoronto.ca/tuition-fee-lookup-tool/). Therefore, instead of
being a "public good, contributing to society through educating citizens, improving human
capital, encouraging civil involvement and boosting economic development," education in
higher educational institutions became marketized and privatized by serving and "largely
benefiting individuals" whose academic and economic capabilities have been affirmed only
(Arocena, Göransson & Sutz, 2018, p. 185). As a consequence, these higher educational
institutions not only marginalize those who cannot meet the enrolment requirements, but
also those who cannot afford the exorbitant tuition fee, hampering their access to
knowledge.
Therefore, the construction of the prevalent knowledge system determines who are
validated to be educated, which ensures that knowledge is a private asset to distinguish
elites from 'ordinary' or 'incapable' people. Restricting access to knowledge means that the
dominant and pervasive knowledge system deprives the rights to be educated of a multitude
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of people and continues to "foster the continuity of the social and political status quo
through the reproduction of the elites," which enhances and exaggerates inequality
(Arocena, Göransson & Sutz, 2018, p. 182).
Potential to Marginalize Knowledge Owners
While offering superiority to groups whose knowledge is deemed valuable, excluded
groups would receive a lower awareness from both others and themselves because of the
failure to have their intelligence recognized and affirmed. This lower awareness, in turn,
further sidelines the value of the marginalized people and their knowledge, and further
limits opportunities to enrich understandings in different realms and find solutions from
existing knowledge to solve current issues.
Tandon (cited in Hall & Tandon, 2017) elaborated this understanding based on his
experience in Rajasthan, where every indigenous farmer would start by saying, "I don't
know sir. You tell me." when having a discussion with him (p. 3). Although these local
farmers had no "formal education" experiences, they did have a wealth of knowledge and
could be more erudite than professionals in numerous aspects like "agriculture, water
harvesting, ecology and veterinary sciences" (p. 3). Nevertheless, the expertise of these
farmers was rarely appreciated or included in academic literature where more people could
learn, which not only resulted in the lack of awareness of their knowledge in academic and
professional fields, but also lead these farmers to believe that their illiteracy meant
ignorance, as illustrated in their answers and reflections in the conversation with Tandon
(Hall and Tandon, 2017, p. 3). The result of the entrenched ideas, which suggested the
farmers' knowledge was not valid or important, was a deep reluctance on the farmers to
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share their knowledge and understandings with more educated or influential people, and on
the professionals to accept the farmers' knowledge as references to tackle current problems
or threats, causing "a more general loss of confidence in the capacity to respond to the
profound challenges of our times" (Hall, 2015, p. 8). Similar problematic situations of
knowledge owners' lower self-esteem and confidence also happen to those who do not have
formal education experience, and those who have been marginalized because of the
previously mentioned three issues.
Based on the theories and examples discussed, contemporary and dominant knowledge
systems are themselves impoverished by their failure to recognize and understand authentic
voices and to cherish knowledge from every individual. In addition, dominant knowledge
systems can block the establishment of a more accessible way, both academically and
financially, for everyone to obtain knowledge. Therefore, an alternative epistemology is
needed to eliminate the barriers and limitations for generating, disseminating, accessing,
hearing and valuing knowledge, and for "[deepening] democracy and to struggle for a fairer
and healthier world," which is also one of the most important goals of knowledge
democracy (Hall, 2015, p. 8).
Alternative epistemology – Storytelling
Stories are a universal form of communication and education. They typically have a
close connection with daily life, and are rooted in and originated from life experiences and
cognitions of “the people around us and the world we live in” (Schank & Abelson, 1995,
cited in McKillop, 2005, p. 5). Moreover, stories facilitate the communication between the
storytellers and the receivers - the listeners and readers - by enabling the story generators
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and disseminators’ “messages and [points] of view to be conveyed” accurately (McKillop,
2005, p. 5). Therefore, storytelling has been “extensively used [as] an effective tool in
higher education” (McKillop, 2005, p. 5). For instance, Plantenga (2012) described “reallife stories [as] the soil in which learning is grounded” (p. 33). Similarly, Hall and Tandon
(2017) considered storytelling as a way for knowledge to be “created and represented” (p.
13).
Storytelling does not discriminate based on educational background, financial ability
or social status of either storytellers or story receivers, and has few restrictions on story
contents to follow mainstream knowledge. Therefore, storytelling offers a platform for the
marginalized and oppressed to gain diverse knowledges and be included in the process of
knowledge generation and dissemination by creating, sharing, and listening to stories.
Better access and inclusion in the process of creating knowledge are especially valuable
when comparing storytelling with mainstream and dominant ways of knowing, which
protect powerful groups’ interests by shaping ideas about what constitutes ‘real’ knowledge
to further reinforce mainstream knowledge systems, marginalize other knowledges, and
confine access to knowledge.
In the following paragraphs, I discuss how these inclusive and expansive features of
storytelling can help democratize knowledge and contribute to building a more just society.
With examples of the utilization of stories in Indigenous histories and the Hollaback! social
movement, I explain how storytelling can empower marginalized people by helping their
voices be heard and their knowledge valued, and also how storytelling can inspire people to
challenge the status quo.
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Storytelling- Residential schools in history
"A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right and evil doesn't become good,
just because it is accepted by a majority." – Booker T. Washington.
One of the most insidious normalcies in indigenous communities is the silence and
denial of their knowledge. According to Sousa Santos' "abyssal thinking," 'invisible'
knowledges, like the Indigenous intelligence, are separated from powerful, mainstream,
objective and scientific knowledges, and are not as valuable as the latter (cited in Hall,
2015, p. 7). Resonated well with this theory, Kunene (cited in Tuhiwai, 2012, p. 135)
delineated that it is common to see younger generations of Indigenous people who feel
ashamed of their own people and culture, since their elders or peers do not know the
pervasive Western knowledge, and their own Indigenous knowledge and wisdom has been
devalued and marginalized. Since Indigenous people have been degraded by dominant
society "to a sub-human category with no knowledge" (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018, p. 17), as a
result, many Indigenous people reached "the point of being embarrassed by, and hostile
towards" their cultural knowledge (Tuhiwai, 2012). Nevertheless, these assumed
knowledgeless people have wealthy expertise, and could be more knowledgable than the
believed elites in numerous fields, such as local history.
According to Thomas (2016), "storytelling [plays] an essential role" in addressing this
displacement and devaluing of Indigenous knowledge and education (p. 178). Stories can
educate people in these communities about "who [they] are, leave [them] with a sense of
purpose and pride, and give [them] guidance and direction" (p. 178). Through storytelling,
more people could learn about the knowledge that has been excluded or distorted by
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Western cultures and governments and cannot be known in the prevalent knowledge
system. For instance, Thomas (2016) shared how she learnt from the stories of her
classmate's experiences of being in a residential school. The Canadian government tends to
tell "disturbingly 'different' stories about the colonial experiences […] to glorify and justify
the colonial project" (Nicholas, 2008, p.19, as cited in Thomas, 2016, p. 179). With the
distorted history and the lack of opportunity to learn, Thomas (2015) and others who were
educated with the colonizers' narratives "[knew] nothing about these places" or related
history (p. 179). To better understand the real history, Thomas (2016) interviewed several
elders who knew about residential schools from their experiences of being forced to attend
these schools. The "memories, feelings, thoughts" in these stories not only inundated the
storytellers themselves but also listeners. Thomas (2016) noted, "I was thinking about the
interview and I began to cry. I almost had to pull over because I had become completely
overwhelmed with grief" (p. 194).
The trauma and the shock that permeated the storytellers' narratives are infectious and
lead to the listeners' emotional as well as intellectual engagement. By hearing these
traumatic stories, the listeners' emotional response is the affirmation and the confirmation
of the storytellers and their stories. Through storytelling, by "tak[ing] seriously what […the
storytellers tell] rather than treating [their] words simply as an illustration of some other
process," the history embedded in these stories is more likely to be heard and understood
(Cruickshank, 1990, p. 1, as cited in Thomas, 2016, p. 186). By seeing "these former
[residential schools] students [as] the experts, because they have special skills related to and
knowledge about this experience" (Thomas, 2016, p. 189), these storytellers are empowered
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as professionals and educators. Therefore, storytelling, "[creates] space for the 'Other,' or
those voices that have been excluded or erased, to be included in the dominant discourse"
(Thomas, 2016, p. 185) and offers Indigenous people an opportunity to participate in
generating and disseminating knowledge about their history and experience of living under
colonization.
At the same time of empowering Indigenous people to tell their stories and take part in
knowledge creation and dissemination, storytelling also inspires storytellers and listeners to
challenge the status quo of representing Canadian history through the colonizer's narrative,
which erases and denies the experiences of Indigenous people in residential schools.
Thomas (2016) explained that although the stories of Indigenous people's experiences in
residential schools were rarely found in any written history, storytelling supports and
validates this excluded knowledge and experiences of survivors, helping them to "continue
to build the strength and capacity to resist colonization and assimilation" (Thomas, 2016, p.
196). By continuously collecting these "missing pieces of history" and passing them on to
"future generations" (Thomas, 2016, p. 196), more people would realize what Indigenous
people have experienced, which will help to dismantle the colonial and sanitized versions
of Canadian history.
In summary, storytelling valorizes and empowers Indigenous people and their
authentic knowledge of the existence of residential schools by offering them access to the
process of knowledge generation and dissemination, and stimulating both storytellers and
listeners to undermine the colonialized histories that erase and exclude Indigenous people
and their stories.
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Storytelling- Hollaback!
Storytelling also sheds light on the voices and experiences of women and LGBTQs.
Because of the widespread patriarchy and the normalization of heterosexuality, priority and
privilege have always been given to males and heterosexual persons. Consequently, issues
of oppression and exclusion happened more frequently to women and LGBTQs.
Nevertheless, their predicaments are rarely mentioned or taken care of in this male and
heterosexual-predominated society.
When confronting "gender-based and other forms of violence and oppression," there is
a lack of available and widely comprehended narratives" for women and LGBTQs to talk
about these experiences (Crenshaw, 1993, as cited in Wånggren, 2015, p. 404). Such lack
of care and platforms results in less willingness of the oppressed to share their stories. Yet
silence aggravates the normalization of violence, which is motivated by gender and sexual
orientation discrimination, leading the public to be indifferent to these victims.
With the attention to the lack of care to gender and sexual orientation-led oppression,
and with the intention to build a more gender and sexuality-based justified society, social
movements like Hollaback!, which later changed its name to Right to Be, were created by
many individuals and organizations who care about women and LGBTQs.
Hollaback! supports the women and LGBTQs who suffer from street harassment
characterized by gender and sexual orientation prejudices. Based on Wånggren (2015),
street harassment is "a form of harassment that takes place in public spaces – thus covers a
wide range of behaviours, from leers, whistles and non-sexually explicit comments, to
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insulting or threatening behaviour, lewd remarks or gestures, flashing, stalking or sexual
assault" (p. 403).
According to Wånggren (2015), "victims and survivors are told to see street
harassment as a compliment, or as 'just a joke,' or indeed as brought on by the victim
themselves – related to what they wore, what route they took and so on" (p. 404). These
false yet normalized assumptions and attitudes toward street harassment prevent people
from understanding street harassment as a form of violence, and cause their indifference
when street harassment happens. This indifference and the lack of understanding and care
result in lower confidence of the harassed women and LGBTQs to tell others about their
stories, which in turn worsens the public neglect of this issue. In response, the primary
purpose of the Hollaback! social movement is to "train hundreds of people to respond to,
intervene in, and heal from [street] harassment" (https://righttobe.org/, n.d.).
One of the essential features of Hollaback! is "the online reporting system where
members of the public can share their stories and give support to each other, highlighting
instances of everyday sexism and harassment which otherwise often go unnoticed"
(Wånggren, 2015, p. 403). The project enables women and LGBTQs to claim their voice
back by being storytellers to generate and disseminate authentic knowledge about
harassment based on gender and sexuality, and invites the public to acknowledge these
violent experiences and learn the knowledge embedded in these stories. There is no
restriction for people to read or post stories on this platform, and there are no requirements
for these stories to follow normalized social rules, like male supremacy and sexuality
binaries. Thus, the women and LGBTQs who have gone through street harassment could
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find allies with similar experiences. They would then be encouraged to share their
experience and cheer each other up to confidently walk out of the shadow of street
harassment. Since no one else would know the experiences of being harassed on streets
better than the ones who have related experiences, the process of sharing these stories on
the Hollaback! story system enables the women and LGBTQs, who have been mistreated
because of their gender and sexuality, to share their expertise and insights on their
oppressed experiences and to educate others that street harassment is a form of violence and
exploitation. In other words, storytelling empowers women and LGBTQs to participate in
creating and spreading knowledge about gender and sexuality exploitation and exclusion.
In essence, storytelling in Hollaback! provides a "space of resistance and
consciousness-raising" (Fileborn, 2014, p. 34, as cited in Wånggren, 2015, p. 404) through
the gathering of stories about street harassment as
counter-narratives that speak back to the mainstream silencing and exclusion of the
harassed. Through storytelling, these counter-narratives expose street harassment as
oppression caused by sexism and sexual orientation binary, and challenge the normalization
of silencing harassed people. Therefore, storytelling encourages and enables more people to
acknowledge the exclusion and exploitation toward women and LGBTQs, and to take
action to cease or prevent street harassment.
An example of the storytelling site promoting awareness and action happened in 2014,
when the Hollaback! website received an email. The sender expressed appreciation for the
story-sharing system which led her to intervene when seeing "a man intimidating a woman
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on the Royal Mile, one of the most visited and crowded streets in the city" (Wånggren,
2015, p. 408). The email noted:
I […] was not confident enough to intervene myself until I started [to] read your page
about a year ago. … With a surprising amount of ease, I ended up successfully diverting the
[harassed] person away and have the woman an opportunity to move on down the road to
wherever she was headed. … I feel so proud, and I owe part of it to you! (Email, 2014, as
cited in Wånggren, 2015, p. 408).
This email demonstrates that storytelling motivates the public to take action to protect
women and LGBTQs who have higher possibilities to face street harassment. In other
words, by reading the counter-narratives, more people would realize the exploitation that
women and LGBTQs received, and see the demand of offering more care and
understanding, and the need to challenge and undermine the normalized indifference and
silencing of these predicaments.
The storytelling approach utilised by Hollaback! can be considered as a "public
educational and consciousness-raising project" (p. 408) because it enables and empowers
women and LGBTQs to educate authentic knowledge through the share of their oppressed
experience. This storytelling approach also inspires "bystanders to step in and challenge
abusive behaviours in public spaces," and encourages more people to realize the need to
challenge the normalized exploitation of women and LGBTQs led by patriarchy and
sexuality binary (Wånggren, 2015, p. 408).
Transformative adult education and the public’s role
Based on the examples discussed, storytelling can help to empower marginalized
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groups by valuing and foregrounding their knowledge. For instance, storytelling can serve
to represent Indigenous people's accounts of history, and recount women and LGBTQs'
experiences of street harassment. Through counter-narratives, storytelling also challenges
the injustice that the less privileged people confront. In other words, storytelling indicates a
hegemonic knowledge pyramid. Within this pyramid, widely accepted knowledge and
knowledge from the powerful and privileged are at the top. In contrast, marginalized people
and their knowledge face erasure and exclusion located at lower pyramid levels. It is
important to note that such exploitation does not only impact excluded people by
preventing them from telling their authentic stories that might contradict what the powerful
and authoritative people choose to let people know. It also deprives the masses of a more
holistic comprehension of the world, which is increasingly important. Therefore, nonhegemonic ways of knowing are needed in order to "[challenge the] inappropriate uses of
power and privilege that create or perpetuate inequity and injustice," which is also the
primary purpose of having transformative adult education (Shields, 2010, p. 564).
According to Shields (2010), "transformative [adult education] begins with questions
of justice and democracy; it critiques inequitable practices and offers the promise not only
of greater individual achievement but of a better life lived in common with others" (p. 559).
By bringing the excluded people's voices and experiences from the margin to the center,
storytelling, as an alternative epistemology, challenges the hegemonic knowledge pyramid
and the dominant modes of knowledge production and sharing, and accelerates progress
toward a more justified and democratic world by valuing and spreading everyone's
knowledge. Therefore, storytelling could be considered a non-hegemonic way of knowing
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and a catalyst for transformative education, enabling and encouraging the sharing of
experiences and personal understandings through stories by those whose knowledge was
marginalized because of their identity and those who have disparate comprehension
compared to the dominant powers.
Freire (1970) elucidated that no one else is "better prepared than the oppressed to
understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society," to tell their oppressed stories,
and to see the urgency to have a more just living environment (as cited in Thomas, 2016, p.
10). Therefore, storytellers are the best educators to inform the public about diverse forms
of exclusion and oppression and appeal for a transformation of the current knowledge
system. In other words, non-hegemonic ways of learning, like storytelling, empower
marginalized or silenced people and their knowledge to be authoritative, and inspire the
public's actions to contest the 'normalized' knowledge deriving from privileged and
influential groups. Consequently, because of empowerment and inspiration to challenge,
storytelling becomes a "powerful [tool…] to deepen democracy and to struggle for a fairer
and healthier world" (Hall, 2015. P. 8)
Under a transformative adult educational setting, storytelling also emphasizes an
interdependent relationship between marginalized people and the masses. Through the
process of storytelling, the masses not only gain more knowledge about exploitation from
the vulnerable groups' experiences and feelings, but also have imperative effects on
affirming and valuing the storytellers' knowledge of multiple social phenomena and issues.
With such affirmation and valorization, less privileged people are more likely to have the
courage to keep sharing their stories with others, be the narrators of their personal or ethnic
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stories, and have their knowledge disseminated.
If the public refuses or is unable to hear and value the stories from those who possess
knowledge at the lower level of the knowledge pyramid, knowledge owners would be
reluctant or even fear sharing their experiences by deeming their knowledge worthless, with
the result that what these vulnerable people have experienced would be missing. This lack
of alternative epistemologies would perpetuate assumptions based on normalized beliefs
and 'common senses'. While reducing the authenticity of marginalized knowledge, the
public would also be deprived of the right to learn from these storytellers and their stories.
In other words, the less privileged people, who are also the storytellers, decide what
knowledge they will share with the masses, while the public could determine whether the
storytellers would share their story. "Without acknowledging [this] interdependence, we
cannot satisfy our goals" to transform the knowledge pyramid into a non-hegemonic,
democratic, fair and justified knowledge system (Taylor, 2015, p. 186). The public, then,
must learn "to 'shut up' and 'listen'" (Hall & Tandon, 2015, p. 367) and to create a safe
environment for storytellers to feel strong and confident to share their knowledge through
stories.
Instead of having a hegemonic knowledge system where people at the top of the
pyramid dominate knowledge generation and absorption, storytelling enables those who are
at lower levels of the pyramid as educators and the masses as the listeners and facilitators to
create a non-hegemonic knowledge system collectively, which enriches the knowledge
people develop, spread and gain, and contributes to a more just society.
Along with the interdependent relationship of storytellers and listeners, storytelling, as
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a non-hegemonic way of knowing, accelerates transformative adult education to construct a
"fairer and healthier world" (Hall, 2015, p. 8). In such a society, knowledge would be less
likely to be judged because it differs from what the powerful and privileged groups want
people to know or simply because of the knowledge owners' identity.
Conclusion
This paper analyzes why a new epistemology is needed, explores storytelling as a new
method of acquiring knowledge, and examines how it relates to transformative adult
education to create a more just and democratic society. By understanding the current
knowledge system’s issues and acknowledging the knowledge that we have contact with is
only partial and is not neutral, it becomes clear that hearing and valuing excluded voices to
construct a more solid cognization of the society we share is necessary. Through the
analysis of storytelling as the alternative and non-hegemonic way of learning, I see a higher
possibility of creating and developing a more democratic and fairer society. In this society,
knowledge is less likely to be classified or evaluated by knowledge owners’ powers and
privileges, like gender identity and sexuality, or whether they have the same beliefs as the
powerful groups want the public to believe.
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