The Crisis of Narration: How Neoliberalism Turned Narratives into Storytelling

“We no longer tell each other stories. We publish, share, and hit like.”

The most-read German philosopher Byung-Chul Han explores the timely phenomenon of the “post-narrative world.”

In this essay, Byung-Chul Han analyzes the modern person surrounded by endless narratives, accounts, and stories. Yet despite this storm of meanings around us, it seems we have lost the ability to truly feel and understand genuine narration—and ended up in a “post-narrative world.”

A digital society is completely subordinated to information, and with each day the process of “denarrativization” accelerates. The flow of information—essentially a raging ocean of data— “chokes the spirit” of story. Even though we exchange and produce information ever faster, online and offline, “we no longer tell each other stories. We publish, share, and hit like.”