Fiction, lies, and stories of power
BarcelonaA few weeks ago I heard a conversation with Jordi Puntí, in which he talked about his novelConfetti, about the life of Xavier Cugat (Proa). At one point, Puntí says that "or"A writer is a liar par excellence," because fiction creates plausible worlds that are not real.
I've been thinking about this lately. Fiction does indeed invent, but inventing isn't lying because, ultimately, it doesn't hide the fact that it constructs a world, nor that it does so from a specific point of view (that of a narrator). Lying, on the other hand, isn't a matter of verisimilitude but of responsibility: it's born with the intention to deceive. Fiction proposes a shared "as if," and the reader (or viewer or listener) accepts that what they receive isn't literally true. One of the most paradigmatic examples of this distinction is that of Orson Welles and the first radio broadcast of The War of the WorldsThe work was fiction, but it was presented with the informational codes of a real broadcast, and many listeners panicked because they did not know how to interpret what was happening.
Today, there is no risk of mistaking fiction for an alien invasion. The problem is that this mechanism has become normalized outside of narrative fiction: we see it in contemporary politics, when those in power construct narratives about their own actions and attempt to gaslight the very facts, presenting reality in a way that obscures responsibility, to the point of casting doubt on the obvious.
Losing one's identity
When this mechanism is embedded in cultural, political, or social narratives, the resulting chronicles of reality are explained in the passive voice: things "happen," "transform," "evolve," but we never find out who decided, who intervened, or who is responsible. This way of narrating reality without assuming responsibility can be seen, for example, in some interviews with Jordi Amat, regarding his essay The Battles of Barcelona (Editions 62), in which he presents the de-Catalanization of the capital of Catalonia as an almost natural consequence of globalization, immigration, or urban successAmat adopts the tone of a chronicler who sadly observes a city losing its identity as if it were foreign to him, despite speaking from a position of cultural power that has actively contributed to making this transformation possible, which he presents as inevitable.
Another recent example of this narrative mechanism of shifting blame outwards We found it in the response from Jaume Ripoll, co-founder and editorial director of Filmin., after the controversy over the scheduling of the documentary Icarus: The Week in FlamesRegarding the police charges against pro-independence protesters in Barcelona, Ripoll argues that programming a work does not equate to endorsing its perspective. But editing, programming, or publishing is never a neutral act: it implies a mindset, a hierarchy, and a stance. When cultural decisions are presented as mere technical acts or matters of freedom of expression, the narrative reverts to the passive voice, that is, shirking responsibility.
Paradoxically, perhaps fiction ends up being the most honest place: not because it tells the truth, but because it does not hide and always assumes the perspective from which it speaks.