On Byung-Chul Han's "The Crisis of Narration"

Excerpt from above video:

Story Selling

"Storytelling is in Vogue. Such is its popularity that it might seem as though we have a renewed passion for telling each other's stories. It might seem... in fact however, this storytelling is anything but the return of narration. Instead it serves to instrumentalize and commercialize narration. Storytelling is becoming established as an efficient communication technology, one that is often manipulative, and has an ulterior motive. The question is always the same, "How do we best use storytelling"? We would be mistaken to assume that all the product managers chatter about storytelling indicates they are a new avant-garde promoting a genuine narrative".

So, he is pointing out the misuse of narratives, or storytelling. The misuse of Storytelling in our time, and seeing that as a symptom of the loss. That's one of the things that we are doing. 

While we have lost a good, or a genuine, connection, a genuine Association to storying stories and storytelling. Our position, instead of seeing ourselves involved and entangled in stories, in narratives, as participants. And when we are participants in narratives, that's where we get our meaning, when we feel the events of the story as meaningful. But when we become the "Masters" of Storytelling, we take stories to be our instruments in our toolbox, and we become technicians using stories as one of our toolboxes. We don't have a a reverential attitude towards stories. Stories become tools. 

Han says, "most crucially however, storytelling is used in marketing, where it is employed to transform even useless things into valuable Goods. Critical for value added, is a narrative that promises customers something special. So when a marketer or a product manager in the way Han is referring to them is using storytelling, I think their use, we could say, has the quality of "getting away with something". They get away using or instrumentalizing a narrative structure in a way that serves them. They're serving something that is essentially a cultural resource. 

I remember, this is related to our discussion, but it's also peripherally related to another video that I posted a long time ago. One of the reviews I have on my channel is of a book called "Taliban" by Ahmed Rashid. In the subtitle of that book, Rashid puts Islam and Oil together, gives them somewhat similar status. And to me, that was an indication of something that I forgot to when I was reviewing the book. I had that point in my mind, but it was one of those things that I forgot to say say out loud. It's very interesting to regard Islam and Oil as two similar things, to regard Islam as a cultural resource just like oil is a natural resource. Any religion is a cultural resource just like how oil is a natural resource. And these resources could be used and misused for evil purposes, could be instrumentalized. Oil and gas could be misused as a natural resource, a religion could be misused as a cultural resource. Other things in culture, other cultural resources could also be misused, including stories, including our trust. And our automatic natural, like organic, almost physiological response to listening to Stories, the way we emotionally respond to a story. That could be misused by business types. But I said it has the character of them "getting away with it," because every time they use it, they pollute these resources, and they make it more difficult for the next person to come and regain our trust. These misuses make us more cynical about the resource, the cultural resource. In this case stories and storytelling. The status of Storytelling in our culture changes, it becomes um defaced or it deteriorates. 

How Cultural Narrative Feedback Influences Individual and Social Expression