Mythocracy:How Stories Shape Our Worlds

Combining Spinoza with such diverse sources as Lazarrato’s idea of noopolitics, work on mirror neurons, Stiegler, Diderot, Sun Ra, Wu Ming, and traditional theorists of narrative such as Riceour, Citton argues that attention and affects are shaped, channeled by stories, which in turn attune us to be receptive to the same stories. There is a certain plasticity to consciousness, to the conatus, that makes us receptive to the same narrative elements.

Far from playing the maître à penser who invites revolt from his armchair, he synthesises the most interesting results of the recent French debate by placing at the centre of his discourse the recent reading of Spinoza, the modern classical thinker who first affirmed that all power emanates from the multitude and that all societies are based on political imagination. The fascination of these pages lies in suggesting not the contents but the narrative forms of a counter-power that coincide with its performative reality in a project that re-proposes with the tools of today the role of a political avant-garde that wants to regain cultural hegemony.

As the subtitle suggests, the main issue of this prolific book, itself driven by a free-flowing game of improvisation, is whether the left needs narratives, and if so, which ones. Following in the footsteps of Rousseau, who asked what the Republic needed in the way of entertainment, Citton has no trouble arguing for the excellence of storytelling, which leads to two questions: where have the storytellers gone? And what kind of storytelling would help the left today?

Finally, Yves Citton's book could be a symptom (in the limited order of "literary theory") of a "well burrowed old mole" on the way: perhaps a crystallisation is taking place from the work of these writers and a few others (and not only in France), in contact with the rage that is rising (the coming insurrection? ), so that a way of telling the story of the class struggle is emerging that has little to do with storytelling.

Yves Citton is one of the most consistently interesting and inventive of contemporary French thinkers. In this playful yet serious book, he asks: should the left become more gauche? Opt for less arrogance and more awkwardness? Instead of yet more debunking, can we reckon with the inescapability of myth and create more alluring and imaginative scripts?

Yves Citton's ambitious book is nothing less than a call for the re-enchantment of the Left. He scripts his literary myth-making by marshalling a commanding history of thought on the power of story-telling in politics. He seeks not to emulate the myths of the Right but to interrupt them with an abundant democratic imaginary that reclaims the labour of narration and its wealth for those who make it daily.

Use Yves Citton’s theory toolbox if you believe in the emancipatory force of myths. Do not subscribe to the conspiracy that the left can’t meme. It is not enough to point at hidden transcripts. In Mythocracy you can read how to design hooks, plots and attractors that make a story work. It’s urgent use a compelling style while also explaining the power of scripting. As the meme says: protect the illusions that keep mankind sane.

Critical theory tends to focus on the critique of narratives. Once we have picked apart the dominant stories, how do we replace them? That might require some investigation of the social-political life of narrative. That's what Yves Citton offers in Mythocracy: both an analysis of the soft power of story and reformation of political mobilization that puts narrative at its center.