Mythocracy: How Stories Shape Our Worlds

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.

Yves Citton is the author of Mediarchy and Ecology of Attention. He is Professor in Literature and Media at the University Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, co-editor of the journal Multitudes, and director of the ArTeC Graduate School in Paris.