Harnessing the power of storytelling for political progress

Mythocracy examines the narrative mechanisms that script our lives through the stories we tell one another. Digging beneath common anxieties about fake news, Yves Citton looks at the attention economy, which organises our political perceptions around affective attractors. These are much more powerful than the truth value of any given narrative. The time has come for the left to reclaim the power of myth from reactionary populism.

"Elegant and persuasive ... if by this point [Hancox] hasn't persuaded you to switch off the dross you're binge watching on Netflix and hotfoot it to a festival or football match, nothing will." - New Statesman

"Yves Citton reminds us of the power of scriptwriting (potentia) and the need to reappropriate the art of storytelling in order to re-establish its rightful power (potestas). Faced with an idle community, to quote Jean-Luc Nancy, he invites us to engage creation in its mythocratic virtuality, to fight with narrative as a weapon. This was the struggle of the classical poets; today it's the return of the literary, with a vengeance." - Art Press

"Citton's conviction is that it is urgent and possible to "renew the imagination of the left", by giving birth to liberating myths and forging "inspiring stories". Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is essential to "tell ourselves stories". To reclaim the imagination. To foreshadow future behaviour. To thwart conventional questions, and to be able to start saying something quite different from what's agreed, expected and anticipated. Clearly, this is something that deserves attention." - Le Monde

"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." - Doppiozero

"Rather than denouncing or lamenting, Citton attempts to understand these logics in order to identify the levers for emancipation." - Le Monde Diplomatique