Narratives in the original sense bring forth the binding, the connecting and the obligatory, thus creating the community as a community of narratives. Narratives eliminate contingency. Just when everything has become so arbitrary and random, that is, in the midst of the contingency storm of the information society, storytelling speaks out loudly. Narratives as narratives are themselves perceived as contingent. Storytelling is spreading in the midst of a great disorientation. It is ultimately narrative in consumer form. Narrative and advertising fall into one. Capitalism appropriates narrative. Storyselling. Storytelling is storyselling. But it cannot transform the information society back into a narrative community. The crisis of narration, however, has a long history. Byung-Chul Han's new essay traces it. In doing so, Han consistently continues his reflections on our information society and now shows that narrative and information are originally opposing forces.
Essay
Byung-Chul Han was born in Seoul, South-Korea. His works are translated in over 30 languages and are bestellers in numerous countries. He lives in Berlin.
By the same author(s)
"The inflationary use of storytelling masks the narrative crisis of the present. In the midst of the noisy storytelling, there is a narrative vacuum that manifests itself as an emptiness of meaning and disorientation." Byung-Chul Han
