Perfectly Logical Explanations
Overview
This activity guide is intended to serve as an example of how to engage with “perfectly logical explanations” or dominant narratives (well-known and widely accepted explanations or narratives that are typically in service of the interests and ideologies of dominant social groups) raised in classroom discussion. While the guide below specifically uses a discussion about the representation of women in video games as an example, it is designed to exemplify the kinds of questions that could be raised to critically interrogate any dominant narrative. More information about Perfectly Logical Explanations (PLE) and the related concepts of multi-partiality and power-balancing.
Activity Goals:
- To help students recognize the weight of dominant narratives and the power they have (i.e., that PLE’s already have a lot of cultural weight and power without the class needing to spend equal time on those perspectives).
- To illuminate how dominant narratives are political and biased and why it is easy to think they are not.
- To raise students’ awareness of how we learn, absorb, and reproduce dominant narratives.
- To help students learn to rigorously interrogate dominant narratives.
