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.
Review: 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? — Rita Felski, author of The Limits of Critique
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. — Stefano Harvey, co-author with Fred Moten of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study
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. — Geert Lovink, author of Stuck on the Platform
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. — McKenzie Wark, author of Love and Money, Sex and Death
A galvanizing treatise on the relationship between narratives and political power….It’s an erudite 21st-century update on Roland Barthes’s Mythologies. * Publishers Weekly *
Citton excels at explaining what is wrong with the narratives of today and why new stories and myths are badly needed. — Sean Sheehan * The Prisma *
Citton’s illuminating and meticulous volume continually traces the ways in which stories travel and develop in order to build our world, and invests itself in its conviction that stories are necessary-and inescapable. We might as well use them to do some good. — Xiao Yue Shan * Asymptote *
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
Imprint: Verso
Publication date: 01/04/2025
