Social Justice Usage
Source: Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. NYU Press, 2001, p. 144.
Counterstorytelling: Writing that aims to cast doubt on the validity of accepted premises or myths, especially ones held by the majority.
New Discourses Commentary
A “counterstory” is a story or narrative-creating rhetorical device that presents anecdotal evidence that seems to contradict an established explanation (or “myth”) when that established explanation is believed by Theory (Critical Theory or that of Critical Social Justice) to uphold, serve, maintain, or legitimate an oppressive systemic power dynamic. That is, they are stories told from a position of oppression to counter an alleged system of dominance and thus to disrupt that system. In general, counterstories will either be of the “exception to the rule” type, to break stereotyping, will present a reversal of the prevailing narrative (often through highlighting an exception), revisionist history, or the deliberate paving over of truth with a false narrative rooted in highly interpretive “lived experience” (see also, paralogy and pseudo-reality).
For a contemporary example, the Black Lives Matter movement uses stories about what it refers to as “police brutality” to challenge statistical data that reveals their movement not to be based in reality so much as in narrative (see also, realities). These counterstories are mostly of the narrative-over-truth type, as the facts of nearly every case championed by the movement have borne out (see also, abolitionism). Another contemporary example exists in the 1619 Project, which seeks to tell a counterstory about American history (specifically, a revisionist critical historiography—see also, geneaology) in order to disrupt and/or subvert the story of the American founding (and thus any remaining American metanarrative).
Counterstories are not only told to produce illegitimate narratives that undermine rigorous fact-based statements about reality, of course. They are and have also been used very effectively to challenge them. They have historically been used to challenge genuine systemic oppression and illiberal cultural hegemonies, particularly when based in prejudice, by providing a humanizing picture that falls outside of the genuinely unjust prejudicial narrative, say racist and discriminatory beliefs about black inferiority under white supremacy or about female emotional instability under patriarchy and misogyny. In those cases, stories that demonstrate black humanity or female competence, while still anecdotal, create epistemic conditions to remind people that prejudicial stereotypes are, at best, statistical descriptions and thus cannot be applied to any specific individual. This means that counterstories can be used effectively and responsibly to remind people of the importance of the liberal principles of judging people as individuals regardless of what identity group they might belong to (see also, individualism and meritocracy) and of recognizing universal humanity that transcends those group memberships.
Therefore, we can see that a counterstory is something that can be used both legitimately, to remind people that statistics and prejudices don’t tell the whole story about individual human beings, or illegitimately, to forward a narrative over an explanation based in fact—or both of these uses can be present at the same time. This makes it impossible to criticize counterstories without a detailed understanding of whether they seek to undermine a rigorous understanding or an insufficiently self-critical hegemony or prejudice.
In Critical Social Justice, while some legitimate uses of counterstories certainly takes place, there is much reason to believe that the majority of the use is of the illegitimate type, which can be ascertained by realizing that their goal is to disrupt and subvert, in their own words, “the liberal order, including legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationality, equality theory, and neutral principles of constitutional law” (Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, p. 3), including science and objectivity. These rigorous and just approaches are ones they seek to replace with a particular (identity political) narrative that is less true and rigorous than what it seeks to challenge, as we see in the Black Lives Matter movement and the 1619 Project, both of which tell their demonstrably inaccurate, if not deliberately fraudulent, counterstories from the perspective of critical race Theory.
Of note, counterstories are of particular importance within critical race Theory, and the telling of counterstories (to challenge dominant—read: rigorous—epistemologies—see also, epistemic oppression and epistemic violence) is often listed as a central tenet of critical race Theoretical thought. The prominence of counterstories in critical race Theory traces back to a longer history of abolitionists and civil rights activists using them much more legitimately during times when both institutional and systemic racism against blacks (and other “minortized” races—see also, people of color) was legal, standard, and common. Under the conditions of slavery, colonialism, segregation, Jim Crow and other forms of institutional racism, or in parallel patriarchy and genuine systematic homophobia, counterstories are a necessary and useful corrective to break the ideological hegemony of real systems of oppression, and they were used as such. In situations where these are not the case, however, they risk being an often highly interpretive indulgence that leads us further away from truth and justice than toward them. Again, it is not always immediately clear which situation we find ourselves in without being willing to accept the existence of knowledge about a share objective reality, deference to it, and the value of rigorous research that does not stop at anecdotal evidence.
Of particular damaging potential, in critical race Theory, counterstories are sometimes presented as being the right form of black or other minoritized knowledges (see also, exclusion), while science, reason, rationality, and objectivity are ascribed to white people, the West, and whiteness. Needless to say, it is racist and Orientalist to ascribe rigorous epistemologies to white, Western people (especially men) and to relegate to other races storytelling, mythology, tradition, superstition, and narrative as their “knowledges” (see also, ways of knowing, and also, lived experience). This is an error critical race Theory and, to some extent, postcolonial Theory do not seem to realize they are making in their desperate efforts to overthrow what they describe as a white, Western hegemony that allegedly includes dominance by white, Western “systems” like science. Their stated intentions are to expand the range of acceptable ways of knowing and knowledges to include those that have been unfairly excluded historically—which is a case they make with some legitimacy, especially historically—but their approach appears not to recognize that it reproduces the very error it claims to seek to correct.
Related Terms
1619 Project; Abolitionism; Black lives matter; Colonialism; Critical; Critical race Theory; Critical Theory; Disrupt; Dominance; Enlightenment; Epistemic oppression; Epistemic violence; Equality; Exclusion; Genealogy; Hegemony; Historiography; Homophobia; Humanity; Identity; Identity politics; Ideology; Individualism; Institutional racism; Justice; Knowledge(s); Legitimate; Liberalism; Lived experience; Men; Meritocracy; Metanarrative; Minoritize; Misogyny; Narrative; Objectivity; Oppression; Orientalism; Paralogy; Patriarchy; People of color; Positionality; Postcolonial Theory; Power (systemic); Pseudo-reality; Race; Racism (systemic); Realities; Reality; Revisionism; Science; Segregation; Social Justice; Subversion; Theory; Truth; Universalism; Ways of knowing; West, the; Western; White; White supremacy; Whiteness
Additional Examples
B. Counterstorytelling: Some of the critical storytellers believe that stories also have a valid destructive function. Society constructs the social world through a series of tacit agreements mediated by images, pictures, tales, and scripts. Much of what we believe is ridiculous, self-serving, or cruel, but not perceived to be so at the time. Attacking embedded preconceptions that marginalize others or conceal their humanity is a legitimate function of all fiction.
In legal discourse, preconceptions and myths, for example about black criminality, shape mindset—the bundle of received wisdoms, stock stories, and suppositions that allocate suspicion, place the burden of proof on one party or the other, and tell us in cases of divided evidence what probably happened. These cultural influences are probably at least as determinative of outcomes as the formal laws, since they supply the background against which the latter are interpreted and applied. Critical writers use counterstories to challenge, displace, or mock these pernicious narratives and beliefs.
Source: Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. NYU Press, 2001, pp. 42–43.
Revision date: 3/19/21
3 comments
So many people on the Left still insist that Rittenhouse is a murderer, but we must respect the Trump conviction.
counterstory? they must have tried to use that in the Rittenhouse trial only to have it backfire
I was wondering why Critical Legal Theory was allowed in the Chauvin trial. I do think it was the variety where narrative over-rides evidence, though. The defence lawyer had a chronology based on time-stamped evidence from bodycams, surveillance cam, 911 call evidence plus the coroner’s statement and testimony, a forensic specialist who represented a team of 13 specialists who had reviewed the evidence. The defence lawyer had dismantled the prosecution’s case by showing the prosecution witnesses more evidence than the prosecution showed them, (eg a longer version of videos from other angles) so they agreed with the defence lawyer. But the prosecution would then show them the piece of evidence they were brought in to speak to, or ask again what their opinion was, and they would repeat the talking point that fit the prosecution’s narrative. The use of force expert for the prosecution, agreed that the restraint was one that he himself used and would sometimes maintain until EMS arrived. Another agreed that the restraint used was in the manual used in Minneapolis.
The coroner said the death was due to the effort of resisting arrest, not the position itself, given the heart condition and amount of illegal drugs in the system leading to a localized hypoxia in the heart. The “homicide” word was used medically to mean that other people were involved. But it kept coming back to the prosecution’s narrative. And that was mostly due to Dr Tobin, who wove a story of great length an impact. I think he misled the jury on, at least 4 points: his ergonomic assessment of the position of restraint, the cross sectional anatomy picture that left out the transverse processes and neural arches that would have protected the airway from the shin (there was no bruising or broken bones), the value of prone positioning in optimizing O2 levels in the blood (it is the best position for optimizing the ventilation/perfusion ratio, even in people that don’t have pneumonia or covid), and the explanation he gave after he was allowed to take the stand after both sides had rested their case. If the jury had understood the significance of what he said about SPO2 levels measures at the hospital, it would have blown the prosecution’s case out the window. As it was, he misused the info; it should not have been used to infer the levels at the scene.
The prosecution used the narrative that the defence’s case was just a story made up to confuse the jury about what they, and everyone else saw on the bystander’s video – police brutality and murder. And Blackwell even referred to the defence’s case as a narrative vs the evidence of the bystander video. I cannot do justice to the narrative that Blackwell weaved.
Although the judge complained, now and then, about the prosecution’s behaviour, he never followed through on his threats to call a mistrial. I did not know what I know now about CRT. Perhaps the judge knew about Critical Legal Theory and its valid use and that is why he allowed it.