The Crisis of Narration
Polity Press · Print & ebook · April 8, 2024
A Philosophy pick for readers exploring The Crisis of Narration.
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- Who it’s for
- A tight, reflective read that treats narration as a way of making sense of lived life.
- Genres
- Social Theory, How Media Works, Social Philosophy
- Published
- Polity Press, April 8, 2024
Nearest books
Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved.
The Storytelling AnimalJonathan Gottschall64% match
ArtfulAli Smith46% match
Storytelling and the Sciences of MindDavid Herman59% match
Stories That StickKindra Hall56% match
All Marketers Are LiarsSeth Godin55% match
The Story FactorAnnette Simmons, Basic Books55% match
ImmediacyAnna Kornbluh54% matchShares How Media Works
Nourishing NarrativesJennifer L. Holberg54% match
For younger readers: Storybooth, Wisdom Tales From Around the World, The Greatest Stories Ever Played
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Narratives produce the ties that bind us. They create community, eliminate contingency and anchor us in being. And yet in our contemporary information society, where everything has become arbitrary and random, storytelling becomes storyselling and narratives lose their binding force. Whereas narratives create community, storytelling brings forth only a fleeting community – the community of consumers.
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No amount of storytelling could recreate the fire around which humans gather to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out. It has been replaced by the digital screen, which separates people rather than bringing them together. Through storytelling, capitalism appropriates narrative: stories sell. They are no longer a medium of shared experience. The inflation of storytelling betrays a need to cope with contingency, but storytelling is unable to transform the information society back into a stable narrative community. Rather, storytelling as storyselling is a pathological phenomenon of our age. Byung-Chul Han, one of the most perceptive cultural theorists of contemporary society, dissects this crisis with exceptional insight and flair.
Narration, Reconsidered
A tight, reflective read that treats narration as a way of making sense of lived life.
Come here for
- stories, religion, and social life
- a compact philosophical lens
Expect
- philosophical texture
- steady, essay-like pacing
Where it sits
| Social Theory | 46% |
|---|---|
| How Media Works | 37% |
| Social Philosophy | 37% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Philosophy
- Authors
- Byung-Chul Han, Daniel Steuer
- Publisher
- Polity Press
- Published
- April 8, 2024
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Philosophy