Söylem Filoloji Dergisi

Öz

South Korean writer and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han is a writer whose books have been introduced to the readers in recent years and who has attracted great interest in a short time. Han currently has 21 books translated into Turkish. The relatively short time span of these translations, the first of which (The Topology of Violence) was published in 2016 and the last (Vita Contemplativa) in November 2024, gives a good idea of the level of interest in the author. The Crisis of Narrative is one of the last works of this corpus, the main characteristics of which have been tried to be laid out. Published by Ketebe publications in May 2024, the work focuses on the concept of narrative in a broad perspective and the transformation it underwent in the first quarter of the 21st century. The 81-page work, like Han's other books, has a limited size but a dense content.
The Crisis of Narrative consists of a “Preface” and ten chapters covering the subject matter from different angles. Han states that the community-building function of narrative art in the past has been transformed into a capitalist consumption tool today, and that narrative has been reduced to the level of a commodity that is bought and sold and consumed instantly. He conceptualises this transformation as a shift from “storytelling” to “storyselling” with a creative word adaptation. The information society of the 21st century, in which the temporal continuity, close listening and deep attention involved in narrative activity have been eroded, has eliminated the patience of storytelling and listening. The Crisis of Narrative is an intense and topical text that offers today's people, who have lost their attention, calm, patience and health in the flood of information, clues as to the causes of this situation and possible ways out.