LIT490S-2-01 Power of the Story
With Professors Rey Chow and Markos Hadjioannou
When elaborating on the age-old figure of the storyteller, the German-Jewish cultural critic Walter Benjamin wrote that the story is essentially different from information. Whereas information has to do with instantaneous verifiability (and thus, one might say, disposability), the story’s lifespan is much longer as its meanings resonate through different storytellers, communities, artistic and narrative traditions. Does Benjamin’s argument about storytelling still hold relevance in the days of social media, AI, and misinformation, when we are inundated every minute with so called “breaking news”?
With this question as a point of departure, we will examine a variety of stories from different modern cultures, including myth, religion, fiction, prose narratives, historical writings, journalistic reports, and film works as well as select theories of narrative, to explore the evolving (rhetorical) techniques, functions, and (aesthetic and/or political) effects of storytelling as a vital mode of creative human activity.
While doing so, we will also ask how stories derive their power. Is power simply another way of talking about agency? Is power a way to define limits, set boundaries, and prohibit certain things from being told, or is power a way to enable new things to become legible, audible, and accessible? Is the power of the story about the framing and/or freeing of thought? Is the power of the story about exposure or covering things up? How do stories engage with our narrative faculty and the stories we hold within us, both individually and as a society? How do people tell stories about themselves? What are the techniques, conventions, institutions, and circuits that make stories powerful?
