20 January 2022
Today, a belief is circulating widely that nearly everything in our lifeworld can be broken down into structures of narrative.
As if it was a magic formula, the experience of knowledge, practice, and even life itself is thought of as something that can only be acquired through a ›story‹. At the same time, this idea obscures its ideological essence. Therefore, this study embarks on showing how the ideological essence of narrative coerces us into collaboration and continuation exactly when, at a critical historical moment, a radical intervention seems necessary. To this goal, the book follows structures of narrative from the time of the great novels (particularly Melville's Moby-Dick and Proust's Recherche) to our contemporary world of algorithms. It shows how these structures of narrative continuously undermine the possibility of a good life or, speaking with Proust, of bonheur. In this sense, the book provides a fundamental critique of an ideological practice under the polemic formula: Gegen die Erzählung – Against Narrative.
Ansgar Mohnkern: Gegen die Erzählung. Melville, Proust und die Algorithmen der Gegenwart, Vienna/Berlin: turia + kant 2022, 197p.