Name: The politics of fiction
Uploaded: 2010-07-16T06:37:00Z
Duration: 19 min 28 s
Description: Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics.

Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics.

The politics of fiction

Fiction opens hearts and minds, allowing people to cross cultural and personal boundaries that identity politics often reinforces. From an introverted child in Ankara to a writer navigating multiple languages and expectations, the speaker shows how stories connect us in ways labels and stereotypes cannot. When an earthquake forced a conservative grocer and a transvestite to share a cigarette, for a moment, all differences faded. Stories, like circles, expand our empathy and imagination, letting us glimpse lives beyond our own.