The fashion of thestorytelling, says Byung-Chul Han, stems from a narrative void, a lack of direction and meaning.storytelling It's the art of telling stories with the goal of emotionally conveying messages. What counts is not the plot or the veracity of the story told, but the ability to move. I thought last week as I watched Donald Trump's whiteboard scene live, with some disbelief and stupefaction. It all seemed like a parody. The unexpected appearance of the worker in a reflective vest even had a touch of unreality. Be that as it may, Trump made use of thestorytelling effectively. The message was not directed to the world—if it had been, it would have been quite different—but to its voters. The proclamation urbi et orbi He deployed it in the following days, suggesting that everything is negotiable, etc., but that to do it properly, it is necessary to start from an advantageous position. The man, at least, is frank, or cynical.
What interested me most, if anything, was the speech addressed directly to his loyal followers (and also, indirectly, to Americans as a whole). To the extent that it's self-congratulatory and somewhat heroic, the story is compelling. It begins with a nebula of unspoken questions, such as: How is it possible that in places where we once lived so well making cars, there are now decaying and semi-abandoned cities? It must be emphasized that this isn't a lament, but a reproach, and it is precisely this nuance that gives the story told by Trump a second part based on a response that's older than walking on foot: it's everyone else's fault because they don't buy our cars, they treat us badly in terms of trade, etc. And thirdly, the happy ending: we'll solve all this with tariffs. In short: introduction, middle, and end, as is the case with good stories. We Europeans would surely have added nuances, annotations, and footnotes to later create a 27-member commission that can only move forward when there is unanimous consensus, etc. Trump knows this, and that's why he laughs.
Trump's narrative is a crude and clumsy simplification, but it works. Even if all this ends, as expected, with a massive inflationary blow to the foot, which will be borne primarily by the American working class, the story justifies itself in terms of national dignity. The other version of events, the one closest to reality, is not palatable to his voters. It goes like this: we proactively promoted globalization, but, unlike the Chinese, who recolonized black Africa without firing a single shot, it backfired on us. Even if it is essentially true, this story is sad and ugly; no one would buy it. No problem: we tell another one, brandishing a blackboard, and that's it. When everything has become arbitrary, evanescent, and contingent—Byung-Chul Han tells us— The crisis of narrative-, hestorytelling is making itself felt more strongly than ever. Arguments lead to reflection, which can turn into disagreement; good stories, on the other hand, unite. And if they're as schematic as the one Trump explained the other day, even better. The cultural hegemony of the United States is the result, in part, of its undeniable ability to tell stories. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that it was the western what gave rise to the United States of the 20th century – that is, its national mythology – and not the other way around.
Today, we Europeans cannot even dream of competing in these Floral Games, which compromise the future through a complacent interpretation of the present. We recently saw a more or less pathetic example of this in the rudimentary account of the kit survival, which is nothing more than a gruesome story to justify a more or less inevitable increase in security spending. Unlike Trump's slate, which has behind it a fabricated but clear and resounding story, the bullshit of the kit part of a confusing, erratic, and hesitant narrative, like everything secreted by the drowsiness of European bureaucracy. Despite its fallacious approach, the American slate works better than these B-movie European horror films. It is assertive and direct, while Ursula von der Leyen's stories are indecisive and retractive. Until she invents her own western, its mythology, Europe will be a headless narrative. If Trump were to one day participate as a Sioux warrior, then a perfect circle would be completed.
