Audacious claims and affirming negotiation: the deliberative potential of myth

Deliberative democrats have long recognised the value of personal storytelling in deliberation. I add to this work by showing how traditional storytelling – as a live, interactive practice – provides a generative response to the challenge of unequal power dynamics in deliberation. In this article, I set out a series of original proposals about how deliberative engagement with politically salient myth can be used to navigate locally specific power dynamics. First, the ambiguity of myth creates space for imagining together, to prompt and give each other permission to articulate new understandings and possibilities. Secondly, the symbolic nature of myth can lower the stakes of risky conversations, enabling those with less power to maintain personal distance from the (audacious) claims they make. Thirdly, the malleable nature of myth can facilitate affirming negotiation, enabling participants to navigate the tension between their commitment to a given political community and their desire for that community to change. This is most clearly demonstrated by looking at how storytelling plays out in specific socio-political contexts: my proposals are grounded in participatory and ethnographic research in Uganda, drawing on a session led by prominent Ugandan poet Susan Kiguli working with the Ganda sovereignty myth Nambi and Kintu.