Notes on 'The Crisis of Narration' by Byung-Chul Han (Part 3)

Byung-Chul Han pictured with the Spanish language

edition of Die Krise der Narration (2023) [a]

I. 

 

Byung-Chul Han is very good at coming up with memorable phrases and titles for his books. Arguably, indeed, that's his greatest talent and I understand why a friend of mine characterised (and dismissed) his work as merely a mix of soundbite and slogan distilled from the work of other much greater thinkers. 

That's a bit harsh, but I know what she means (even if I wouldn't wish to criticise Han for this). 

 

Anyway, on we move to section six of The Crisis of Narration [b] - 'From Shocks to Likes' ...

 

Reading Benjamin (who is in turn reading Baudelaire and Freud), Han argues that external reality impacts upon the subject as a form of shock and that consciouness is a way of registering and protecting us from stimuli that would otherwise be too much to handle: "The more readily consciousness registers these shocks, the less likely they are to have a traumatic effect." [44]  

 

Having dreams and forming memories are thus delayed ways of coming to terms with things that might otherwise overwhelm us. And the modern world is profoundly shocking; "the shock aspect of individual impressions has become so intensified that our consciousness is forced to be permanently active as a shield against stimuli" [45].  

 

But that isn't good; for it means we register less and less reality and have weaker and weaker experiences (our dreams become less disturbing and our memories less vivid). We need some degree of shock in order to feel and to think and to create. 

 

Unfortunately, we don't just now act as living organisms to protect ourselves from stimuli - we employ digital technology to (literally) screen off reality. Han writes:

 

"Etymologically, a screen [Schirm] is a protective barrier. A screen bans reality, which becomes an image, thus screening us from it. We perceive reality almost exclusively via digital screens. [...] On a smartphone screen, reality is so attenuated that it can no longer create any shock experiences. Shocks give way to likes." [46] 

 

That's what we want today: a non-threatening, non-disturbing, non-shocking world that we can like. Not a world of otherness that we can gaze at and which gazes into us, but a familiar, friendly, flat, sealed-off and smoothed-off world that is pleasing to the eye and satisfies our need for safety and smartness. 

 

Nietzsche would not approve. Lawrence would not approve. Heidegger would not approve. Baudrillard would not approve. In fact, anyone who loves objects and otherness and wishes to live dangerously in a world in which dreams, memories, and disturbing artworks are still possible would not approve.  

 

For Han, this world cowardly new world is typified by Netflix and Jeff Koons:

 

"In the age of Netflix, no one speaks of having shock experiences in connection with films. A Netflix series is nothing like a piece of art that corresponds to a pronounced danger to life and limb. Rather, it typically leads to binge watching. Viewers are fattened like consumer cattle. Binge watching is a paradigm for the general mode of perception in digital late modernity." [47] 

 

"The type of artist represented by Baudelaire, someone who inadvertently causes fright, would today  seem not only antiquated but almost grotesque. The artist who typifies our age is Jeff Koons. He appears smart. His works reflect the smooth consumer world that is the opposite of the world of shocks. [...] His art is intentionally relaxed and disarming. What he wants above all is to be liked." [48][c]

 

 

II. 

 

I do agree with Han: big data does not explain anything and the numbers never speak for themselves. 

 

Having said that, if we know the how, what, where and when, perhaps it becomes a bit easier to answer the metaphysical question of why and I don't see why theory shouldn't be based upon data. 

 

Similarly, I agree that whilst AI can compute and count it doesn't really think, but that doesn't mean it can't help us conceptualise and comprehend and continue to produce narratives (be they philosophical, psychoanalytic, or artistic in character) if that's our wont. 

 

Because Han tends to think in quite stark (and oppositional) terms - narrative community contra information society, for example - his work can unfortunately become trapped in its own binaries.         

 

III.

 

I have to admit, I'm a bit dubious about the healing power of narrative, even if I quite like the idea of the philosopher as cultural physician practicing the art of critique et clinique, and even if I have in the past promoted an idea of rescripting the self. 

Obviously, Han sees himself very much as one who has come to heal (even save) mankind by helping us to come to terms with the many ills and woes of contemporary culture by embedding them in a meaningful context; if not, indeed, in what comes close to being a religious narrative that "provides consolation or hope and thus carries us through the crisis" [57]. 

 

Jesus! This reminds me of that pompous egg-headed philosopher Alain de Botton, who, thankfully, seems to be keeping a lower media profile of late. He also treated his readers like small children in need of the consoling voice or gentle touch of a loving parent when they felt bad. 

At best, it's patronising and at worst, it's philosophical mollycoddling. 

 

 

IV.

  

As a Lawrentian, I often refer to the inspiration of touch and/or the democracy of touch: click here or here, for example. 

 

Touch is one of the key terms in Lawrence's phallic vocabulary [d] and so I'm pleased that Byung-Chul Han also recognises the importance of touch: "Like storytelling, touching also creates closeness and primordial trust." [58] 

 

That's true, but I suppose it depends on who's doing the touching and in what context.        

Han goes on to suggest that we now live in a society "in which there is no touching" [59] and that this has negative consequences:

 

"The retreat of touch is making us ill. Lacking touch, we remain hopelessly entrapped in our ego. Touch in the proper sense pulls us out of our ego. Poverty in touch ultimately means poverty in world. It makes us depressive, lonely and fearful." [59-60]   

And, paradoxically, the rise of digital connectivity and social media only makes things worse. 

Again, I think that's probably true, but I understand why some would dismiss this as a series of groundless assertions, made as they are without any supporting evidence. In the end, when you read an author like Han, you simply have to take a lot on trust (those who love his work will believe every word; those who don't will adopt a more sceptical position).  

 

V. 

I mentioned above Han's notion of a narrative community. But other than being something in contradistinction to the information society, what is a narrative community? 

 

It seems to refer to a small village (with or without an ancient tree at its centre), where the villagers sit around and swap stories that reinforce values and norms and thereby ensure unity (i.e., produce a we). There's no competitive individualism in the narrative community; just solidarity and empathy.

 

But Han doesn't want his readers to mistake the narrative community for some kind of Volksgemeinschaft as conceived by the Nazis and rooted in ethno-nationalism (or blood and soil). 

 

He wants, rather, that we conceive of the narrative community as a dynamic society allowing for change and otherness and do not "cling to a particular identity" [63], embracing instead a model of universal humanism informed by Kantian philosophy [e] and the poetry of Novalis [f].  

     

Well, I'm sorry, but where Han leads I will not follow ...

 

Push comes to shove, I think I prefer even the hell of the present to a future utopia promised by Idealist philosophers and Romantic poets! And Han's optimistic political vision, based on his concept of a narrative community which "provides meaning and orientation" [68] and opens up a new order, is not one I share.      

Notes

 

[a] This image is borrowed from a review of Byung-Chul Han's La crisis de la narración, by Marco Nicolini entitled 'El regreso del storytelling' (20 Oct 2023) and published on the Arzeta website: click here (or here for the English translation).

 

[b] Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2024). The work was originally published as Die Krise der Narration, (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2023). Page numbers given in the above post refer to the English edition. 

 

[c] Han really hates Jeff Koons. I have written on this (and in defence of the latter and his artwork) previously on TTA. See for example the post dated 16 Feb 2022: click here.  

[d] I explore this phallic vocabulary on James Walker's Memory Theatre (a digital pilgrimage based on the works of D. H. Lawrence): click here.

[e] Han refers to and quotes from Kant's 'Perpetual Peace', a philosophical sketch from 1795 in which the latter dreams of a global community in which all human beings are united and there can be no refugees: "Every human being enjoys unlimited hospitalty. Everyone is a cosmopolitan." [Han, The Crisis of Narration, p. 63.]

      Kant's essay can be found in Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 93-130.  

 

[f] Han writes: "Novalis is another thinker who argues for radical universalism. He imagines a 'world family' beyond nation or identity. He takes poetry to be the medium of reconciliation and love. Poetry unites people and things in the most intimate community." [63] 

      That Han should simply take us back to moral idealism and Romantic fantasy is disappointing to say the least. However, those readers who wish to know what Novalis has to say about the world family all living as one in a beautiful society, should see his Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Margaret Mahony Stoljar, (State University of New York Press, 1997).   

 

 

Part 1 of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

Part 2 of this post can be read by clicking here.  

On Phlegm, Philosophy, and Apathy

Franz Gareis: portrait of Novalis (1799)

The 18th-century German poet and mystic known as Novalis was fond of the phrase: Philosophiren ist dephlegmatisiren - Vivificiren! This has since become a familiar slogan in the work of post-Romantic writers, often translated along the lines of: 'To philosophise is to cast off apathy and to live!' 

To be honest, however, I'm not entirely convinced by this call to philosophical vitalism, either in the original German or English translation (though would have happily painted it on T-shirt when I was nineteen and regarded myself as a punk revolutionary). 

For one thing, I'm not convinced that phlegmatic is synonymous with apathetic; to be cool, calm, and self-possessed isn't quite the same as being without passion - nor, come to that, does it mean one is deadened in some manner, like an unleavened lump of inert matter.

Ulimately, it's just prejudice to ideally equate the love of wisdom with life and the overwrought, overheated world of feeling. For philosophy can, actually, be something entirely other; something alien, something perverse, something inhuman; something as abstract and as beautiful as a solitary snowflake.  

The fact is - contrary to what Walter Pater might say - we don't all wish to burn like a flame or to think always on the edge of ecstasy (though, etymologically - and ironically - phlegmatic means inflammation); some of us want to put ideas on ice for the same reason we like to add ice to our drinks; some of us, indeed, aspire, like Sade, to a condition of apathy that is pleasurable (in a denaturalised and non-Stoic manner) not only beyond good and evil, but beyond hot and cold.

Thanks to Simon Solomon for suggesting this post.

The Blue Flower Post

I.

Even though some floraphiles like to parade their knowledge of its modern Latin name - derived from the Greek terms mēkōn and opsis - and insist that the Himalyan blue poppy is not a true poppy at all, it's always been one of my favourite flowers and there's surely no denying the beauty (and authenticity) of its colour. 

In fact, I'm very fond of all blue flowers - from the palest of pale forget-me-nots and delicate little alpine plants that glory in the snow, to those large Bavarian gentians that Lawrence described as darkening the day with a smoky-blueness belonging to the underworld.   


II.

Simon says all this reveals the Romantic aspect of my character. And perhaps he's right: for the Romantics were certainly enchanted by die blaue Blumen and gave it crucial symbolic meaning within their aesthetics and wider philosophy.

Novalis, for example, the 18th-century German poet and mystic who preached a Liebesreligion based on his reading of Fichte, used the symbol of the blue flower in his unfinished novel entitled Heinrich von Ofterdingen based on the life of the fabled Middle High German poet of that name.

In the book, the blue flower betokens man's metaphysical striving for the infinite whilst also symbolising the importance of remaining true to the natural world, for, according to Novalis, the development of the human self - and the ideas and emotions experienced by that self - is also a form of miraculous flowering. 

III.

Having conceded my own Romanticism, it's important to note that, ultimately, I'm not a Romantic; that I am, in fact, anti-Romantisch. I wouldn't go so far as to shout: Schlagt die Germanistik tot, färbt die blaue Blume rot!, but I agree with Walter Benjamin that it's become impossible to share the intense longing for transcendence that marked the true Romantic, or remain an uncritical devotee of the blue flower (as a symbol, not as an actual blossom).         

As Benjamin nicely noted: "No one really dreams any longer of the Blue Flower. Whoever awakes as Heinrich von Ofterdingen today must have overslept."

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Bavarian Gentians', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 610-11. This verse can be read online by clicking here. 

Friedrich von Hardenberg, (aka Novalis), Heinrich von Ofterdingen, unfinished work written in 1800 and first published a year after his death in 1802. An English translation of this work is available to read as a Project Gutenberg eBook by clicking here.   

Walter Benjamin, 'Dream Kitsch', in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, and Others, (Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 236. Click here to read the essay online. 

For a sister post on the silver-studded blue butterfly, click here.