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Post-Modern Etnography & a Story

The tale, the legend, the essay as well as other similar forms of writing are unrelated to traditional oral culture. The storyteller, who is part of oral culture, takes what he learns from listening and presents it back to his audience when he tells his stories, intertwining the experience and the knowledge into everyday life. Walter Benjamin defines storytelling as a history of somebody's experience.

In writing his essay, "The Storyteller," however, Benjamin has created something very close to what happens between the art of storytelling and the listener by explaining himself through stories and anecdotes. Benjamin also goes onto explain how the art of storytelling is disappearing. "Facts" may be related in a straightforward manner, but most people are not comfortable sharing their experiences and are embarrassed to tell stories. Additionally, more and more people are becoming isolated from one another due to their dependency on television, computers, or maybe even a preferred lifestyle. As Benjamin notes:

Every morning brings us the news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information. Actually, it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it (Benjamin 89).

As a society, we currently are bombarded with information from television, radio, newspapers, billboards, computers, and even bus benches and grocery bags. In processing all this information, we lose the benefits of thinking, using our imagination, and feeling the pull of mysterious stories. We lose the value of information as soon as it is given to us. Storytelling, however, is free of the explanations and definitions required of news reporting. According to Benjamin's analysis, industrializ...

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Post-Modern Etnography & a Story. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 21:36, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1695753.html