The narrative and its sunset
31
May
Modern thinking lacks a model for the Whole,
I would say that it even lacks systematic thinking, Peter Sloterdijk even states that it is not a time for thinking, it is a time of trends dictated by hashtags, Stories, blogs and reels (mass diffusion mechanisms using social media).
Byung-Chul Han states that despite the “inflationary use of narratives reveals a crisis of narrative”, paradoxical, however “there is a narrative vacuum that manifests itself as a void of meaning and as disorientation” (Han, pg. 9), before the narrations anchored us: “they assigned us a place and transformed being-in-the-world into being-at-home, giving life meaning, support and guidance, that is, life itself was a narration…” (idem, pg . 9), is at the same time deterritorialization and uprooting.
However, Byung-Chul himself lets slip, through reading The Narrator by Walter Benjamin (died in 1940) that this is before the new media, citing it as “knowledge that comes from far away finds fewer listeners today than information about the upcoming events” (Han, p. 17 quoting him), the reader jumps from one piece of news to another, he doesn’t linger there, “the long, slow and lingering look was lost. “(pg. 17).
Still quoting Walter Benjamin, he differentiates information more clearly from knowledge: “information only has value when it is new.
She only lives in that moment, she needs to give herself entirely to it and, without wasting time, she has to explain herself in it” (Han, pg. 18), curiously a thought prior to the 40s. He will go into the concept of information, so important in certain areas such as Information Science, saying that it [today] is “the means of the reporter, who scours the world in search of news” (pg. 19), there is no necessary distance from the fact that digests it and makes it knowledge, “the information withheld, that is, the explanations avoided, increase the narrative tension” (pg. 19).
The narrative crisis is not due to the new media that have enhanced them, but to the fact “that the world is flooded with information. The spirit of narration is being suffocated by the flood of information” (pg. 20), but what then is narration? Han quoting Walter Benjamin invokes Herodotus, narrating the defeat of the Egyptian king Psamenit to the Persian king Cambyses, after his defeat.
The Persian king humiliates him by making him see his daughter becoming a servant and his son being executed, but the Egyptian king remained motionless looking at the ground, but when he saw his slaves as prisoners, “he hit his head with his fists and expressed deeply sadness” (pg. 22), because by lamenting for the servants “they destroy the narrative tension” (pg. 22).
He mentions that for Benjamin, the first sign of the decline of narration is the emergence of the novel at the beginning of the modern era (pg. 23), with its condition of experience and wisdom, narration knows how to give advice “about life” (pg. 24), the narrative community is a “community of attentive listeners” (pg. 25), there is careful listening in it.
Modern political and ideological narratives are after curious, picturesque and spicy facts, there is nothing of wisdom in them, they move the public through the impact and rush of “hot” and summarized information, there is no narration, there is no attentive listening and when there is it is due to the ecstasy or the spectacle promoted, it is removed from the context of a narration.
Those who still exist in legalism and moralism, contradictorily with the daily life they live, present in the modern religious narrative, should remember facts such as the non-judgment of the adulterous woman (who should be stoned according to the Jewish custom of the time) and Jesus “does not judge her ” (John 8:3), the testimony of the sinner who sits in the back while the Pharisee sits in front and feels proud because “I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust and adulterers” (Luke 18, 11-13), and also Jesus’ challenge when healing a man with a dry hand on the Sabbath (Mc 2,4): “And he asked them: “Is it permissible on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil? Save a life or let it die?” But they said nothing”, the biblical narrative always makes this distancing a way of thinking and rethinking values, it is not Manichaeism and modern moralism.
The stories of pirates and the impressive stories of the Vikings, prior to the period of navigation and mercantilism and even of tax havens on islands spread across the globe, with the complacency of “legal and moral states”, where the deposit is deposited, are also narrated. public money stolen from nations and the people themselves by politicians.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) A crise da narração, transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
