Counternarratives: Troubling Majoritarian Certainty

Abstract

Narratives featuring majoritarian (e.g., White, male, middle/upper class, and/or heterosexual) protagonists are so prevalent in U.S. society that they have become the normative reference point by which some members of society may view and label others. They may, therefore, implicitly consider those who do not fit the majoritarian mold as somehow inferior or deficient. Counternarratives challenge majoritarian biases by normalizing the experiences of minoritized persons and inviting their stories to rupture the dominant narrative. In this article, I engage the concept of counternarratives by relating my encounter with a historical narrative that differed from the majoritarian one I had been taught. I then describe how counternarratives can take a reader on a journey through time, sociality, and place to evoke a sense of connection with a non-majoritarian protagonist and awaken the possibility for seeing the world anew. The article continues with descriptions of counternarrative texts and their potentials, first from literature and contemporary autobiography and then from within music education.