“At every stage in history, people operate within a constructed frame of ideas, metaphors and narratives and this story frame defines how people think of themselves, what they think is possible in life and how they think the world works. To put it more pointedly, there is not now and has never been some abstracted social reality out there; at every moment, in ways influenced by culture, science and technology, people construct a social reality that validates some truths and distorts others. These frames define what we think of as good for us – how we pursue our individual and collective self interest. They define what we think is possible. But these frames are not fixed.” – Liu & Hanauer (2011)

“There is only perspective seeing, only perspective knowing … and the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our concept of this thing – our objectivity be.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Profound aversion to resting once and for all in any one total view of the world and enchantment with opposing points of view, refusal to be deprived of the stimulus of the enigmatic.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

But the story doesn’t end with acknowledging that reality is plural. We need also attend to “power” - the diverse ways some perspectives come to “outweigh” other perspectives in defining / producing social reality.

“Politics… is always a matter of knowing who is qualified to say what a particular place is and what is done in it.”
– Jacques Rancière