Storytelling
Bewitching the Modern Mind
Published on 31. January 2017
192 pages
978-1-78478-659-5 (ISBN)
Description
Politics is no longer the art of the possible, but of the fictive. Its aim is not to change the world as it exists, but to affect the way that it is perceived. In Storytelling Christian Salmon looks at the twenty-first century hijacking of creative imagination, anatomizing the timeless human desire for narrative form, and how this desire is abused by the marketing mechanisms that bolster politicians and their products: luxury brands trade on embellished histories, managers tell stories to motivate employees, soldiers in Iraq train on Hollywood-conceived computer games, and spin doctors construct political lives as if they were a folk epic. This "storytelling machine" is masterfully unveiled by Salmon, and is shown to be more effective and insidious as a means of oppression than anything dreamed up by Orwell.
More details
Edition
Ebook UK & RoW
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Reflowable
ISBN-13
978-1-78478-659-5 (9781784786595)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2017
Verso Books
€16.50
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Christian Salmon is a writer and researcher in the Centre for Research in the Arts and Language at the CNRS in Paris. Founder of the International Parliament of Writers, he is the author of Tombeau de la fiction, Devenir minoritaire, and Verbicide. He writes regularly for Le Monde.
Content
- Intro
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Preface to the English-Language Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Magic of Narrative, or, the Art of Telling Stories
- The Storytelling Revival
- Narrative as Instrument of Control
- "Stories That Really Tell Us What America Can and Should Be About"
- A Worrying Proliferation
- 1. From Logo to Story
- Brands in Crisis
- Beneath the Swoosh, the Sweatshops
- What's in a Name?
- The Brand is a Story
- The "Narrative World" of Brands
- The Dream Society
- 2. The Invention of Storytelling Management
- A Story For Our Times
- The Silence of the Start-Ups
- A History of Silence
- "Don't Keep Quiet: Tell Stories"
- Management Theorists and the "Narrative Turn"
- Telling Stories About Work
- The Magical Fables of Capitalism's Gurus
- Gurus, Purveyors of Managerial Fashion
- Shakespeare on Management
- 3. The New "Fiction Economy"
- India's Call Centers and the Globalization of Minds
- The Souls of the Outsourced
- The "Fictionalization" of Workplace Relations
- Emotional Capitalism's New Authority Model
- Fictions About Companies or Fictional Companies?
- The Destructuring Effects of the Apologia for Permanent Change
- Storytelling's Response
- 4. The Mutant Companies of New-Age Capitalism
- Managing Removals at Renault
- Computer-Assisted Storytelling
- "Storytelling Companies"
- Enron: A Fabulous Story From Wall Street
- Stories: The Financial Manager's Best Currency
- 5. Turning Politics Into a Story
- Ashley's Story
- A 9/11 Family
- "They Produce a Narrative, We Produce a Litany"
- Power Through Narrative
- The Great Communicator Reagan, and his Disciples Clinton and Sarkozy
- Postmodern Presidents
- Watergate and the Coming of the Spin Doctors
- Creating a Counter-Reality
- Scheherazade's Strategy
- 6. Telling War Stories
- Virtual Warfare in Baghdad
- From Cold War to Fake War
- The Issue of "Realism"
- "Do We Have the Right Story?"
- The "Story Drive" Project
- "Weapons of Mass Distraction"
- War: A Counter-Narrative
- Hollywood and the Pentagon Work Together
- 24: Fiction Normalizes States of Emergency
- 7. The Propaganda Empire
- "We're An Empire . And We Create Our Own Reality"
- From Propaganda to Infotainment
- Fox News: A Mutation in the History of the Media
- The Lie Industry
- A Magician at Headquarters
- From Uncle Ben's to Uncle Sam
- Storytelling as Propaganda
- "Fire in the Mind"
- Afterword: Obama in Fabula
- Stories Degree Xerox
- Hillary Clinton's Cojones
- Sister Sarah and Sexy Palin
- Obama's Magic Square
- Politics' "Second Life"
- Obama's Narrator
- The Politics of Signs
- A Strategist Appeals to the American Unconscious
- Notes
