A Quote in Unclear Times
A preemptive defense
Contextualizing this Essay
While I have every intention of playing fast and loose with this ‘blog,’ I do recognize that I have some duty of care, especially if I want to discuss small, independent podcasts, which I do. In fact, I have an entire series in the works highlighting various indie podcasts and what I think of as the ‘revealed meaning’ in each one. This idea of ‘revealed meaning’ came from a Hannah Arendt quote that floats around the internet without any sort of context. The quote goes, “It is true that storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” While that quote is beautiful--and inspiring for any writer--it’s worth noting that Arendt is an odd fit in this situation. She considered herself a political theorist, and even for those who want to overlook her own thoughts on the matter and classify her as a philosopher against those wishes, she’d still be a political philosopher. Her principal concern was the citizen and their political order, which should make one wonder where this particular quote came from, lest one accidentally make their argument out of figurative sand.
Ultimately, I think this “argument made out of sand” is a larger problem and not just a potential issue with this particular quote. I’ve seen a number of video essays, blogs, and other online pieces try to make a point with a specific line or scene as their evidence, but that snippet is either being misinterpreted or comes from a piece that actually disproves that person’s central thesis outright. Context isn’t everything, sure, but it matters when trying to prove yourself right. When it comes to constructing an argument, evidence is important but not all evidence is created equal. Effectively, layering your deck with ties to material that actually disproves you is a loan taken at incredibly high interest. When you put evidence in your piece--of whatever form--you are borrowing the legitimacy or authority of whatever it is you are referencing, but if someone were to trace that link back to its source and that source disagrees with you or is something you clearly didn’t understand, it would be not just the immediate undoing of your argument but cost all your credibility as well.
When misquoting or misattributing, the underlying assumption is that your audience won’t bother looking into your sources, which is a bit insulting. However, if you don’t flinch at the smell of your own bullshit, which is to say if you don’t flinch at your own cut corners, you have a somewhat decent chance at getting away with it, especially if what you're doing is making content for mass consumption online or if you already have an established platform. After all, what audience goes so far as to trace back sources their favorite creator is referencing? Particularly in an age of parasocial relationships? Trust is implicit in that situation. Trust is a strong defense. But to me, trust is not something to be taken advantage of so easily.
That being said, I recognize the temptation. For one, it certainly makes things easier. You are confident in your convictions, and you have a source that probably works. If you only need a placeholder, this thing you found from a quick Google search can easily serve as that. You tell yourself repeatedly that your argument does not actually need outside evidence, but citations are expected, as your teachers used to tell you. On the other hand, you might not realize this is what you are doing, which is a situation that would only be possible if the source material is not outright contradictory but simply a poor fit: the sort of situation that could arise if one depends too much on a quote about writing that seems misplaced in the oeuvre of a political theorist, as an example.
I’m not saying Arendt’s quote is entirely irrelevant to storytelling or writing. But in this situation, while there may be a connection between the source material and the point, that connection is not going to be immediately obvious.
In an upcoming piece, I risk doing this quotation misuse by referencing that Arendt quote without mention of its source or figurative home. In the pre-pandemic era, I actually considered one-upping that commitment by getting this line tattooed on my body but was deterred by my perpetual and perhaps justifiable fear of pain. Regardless of how my devotion to that quote might manifest, concerns remain. I remain steadfast in my conviction that the meaning this quote assumes when forced to stand on its own remains true, worth considering, and relevant to several discussions on independent podcasts, but for that point to land properly, I need to prove--at least in my estimation--that I am not kidnapping a random line of text and misappropriating it. Rather, I am using what I genuinely need to use. I have yet to find any line from any other thinker whose work can better explain or anchor my thoughts, and to be honest, Arendt is such an influential figure for me that even if I were to find some substitute, there would be something dishonest about a swap. This line is at the source of my thoughts on storytelling, its merits, and the power of independent podcasts, so permit me to better explain why.
***
Contextualizing the Line
The quote in question is actually part of a larger sentence. The full sentence is as follows:
It is true that storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it, that it brings about consent and reconciliation with things as they are, and that we may even trust it to contain eventually by implication that last word which we expect from the “day of judgment.” (Arendt, 1968, p. 105).
In addition to being shortened, when the quote floats around the internet, it’s full source is often not included. It is rightfully attributed to Hannah Arendt, but it’s not found in one of her more famous books. Rather, it’s found in one of the essays contained in a lesser known collection. Men in Dark Times (1968) presents a number of what could be called short biographies about various figures of the early part of the 20th centuries. The ‘Dark Times’ part of the title is taken from a poem by Bertolt Brecht entitled “To Prosperity,” a poem that features the utter despair and atrocities that marked the early part of the 20th century (Arendt, 1968, p. viii). For Arendt, the titular ‘Dark Times’ did not just refer to the monstrosities of the era, but the fact that the reality of these monstrosities was so easily disregarded at the behest of “the highly efficient talk and double-talk of nearly all official representatives” (Arendt, 1968, p. viii). This hidden reality is counter to how Arendt understands--and why she exalts--the public realm, which casts “light on the affairs of men by providing a space of appearance” (Arendt, 1968, p. viii). Arendt sets up this imagery in the preface of the book, and the various subjects of her book are meant to represent a sort of contrast. The figures featured in this collection bore some small or flickering light in their own way.
It’s worth noting that while Brecht is one of the figures featured in this book, he is not the person the quote in question is attached to. That honor goes to Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Arendt defaults to Dinesen’s pen name when referring to her, which I will do here for continuity’s sake.
Dinesen, as Arendt explains, never sought out to be a writer or to occupy any sort of public-facing position (Arendt, 1968, p. 95-96), but that’s what happened. The first part of the essay address this quirk of Dinesen’s story , but then she turns to Dinesen’s work particularly her most famous work Out of Africa (1937), which is considered autobiographical, and the implications therein.
The Dinesen piece is brief, but I will further condense it here. You could almost think of Dinesen’s writing career not as an accident but as a sort of placeholder. This storytelling-based part of her life began as a way to “disperse her worries about the farm and relieve her boredom when no other work could be done” (Arendt, 1968, p. 96). At this point, Dinesen was already in Kenya, and storytelling--in whatever form that might have taken for her then--was a way to spend time and entertain her friends. It was a low stakes endeavor that was compatible with her way of living, but it came into greater relevance when her life in Africa fell apart and her lover died (Arendt, 1968, p. 98). In some sense, this series of losses created a larger hole but a similar thing happened: storytelling entered into this space and fit within it perfectly.
This is not, however, the story of a woman struggling with her grief for a lost lover and way of life. While I do believe that stories and storytelling have therapeutic benefits and there are elements of that here, that isn’t what is being discussed. Arendt focuses on a broader picture or a phenomenon, which just so happens to encompass this particular thing. On the whole, she does not conceptualize storytelling as the construction of a narrative, and she deemphasizes typical fiction creation (Arendt, 1968, p. 97). Rather than creating something out of nothing or almost nothing, Arendt emphasizes a loyalty to life as a key part of storytelling. One initially lives through certain events and through their personal imagination--assuming they have as much--relives them and reconsiders them in a new light. In other words, one does not tell stories to escape reality but to enter into a deeper relationship with it through an imagination-based reengagement or repetition.
This quote, in the context of Dinesen’s work, is not an idea fully explored. It is an included statement or an assurance to the reader that this idea is true and potentially has been proven elsewhere. In some sense, it could either be considered a premise or something to be taken for granted. Consequently, allow me to unpack it here despite the counterintuitive nature of the endeavor.
Arendt was not one for minutia or to ponder the details. As I said before, Hannah Arendt, famously, did not consider herself a philosopher, rejecting that title outright. Her concern with philosophy was its focus on the singular ‘man’ and styling a good life for that singled out individual. Whereas, it was ‘men’ collectively that inhabited the world and had to operate as such, as a community or collection. Her work, therefore, deals with more general phenomena that can be thought of as the shared world or shared actions of individuals but is not so concerned with the individuals themselves. Or, in other words, it’s not about defining minutia so much as it is understanding the reality of things as they work together.
Arendt’s conceptualization of storytelling is cut from a similar cloth, you could say. To her, storytelling is a part of living, particularly when you can bracket and set aside any measure of commercial or external success much like Isak Dinesen had with her lack of ambition for whatever glitz and glamour could be attributed to a writer’s life. Here, I have to note, even if I cannot go into it in much depth, that Arendt’s thought includes and is based on a staunch divide between the private and public realms. Under this schema, commercial success would be a private concern and uninteresting to Arendt.
Without a sales pitch or monetary motivations, storytelling enters into the public or shared realm of human affairs. There is something performative or theatrical about it as the storyteller then presents something to their peers. It becomes something akin to a dance. In a good dance, the dancer and the choreography blend together into one entity. Even the dancer’s technical mistakes or other quirks might become part and parcel with their movements and with the resulting visual. In a good story--or a recollecting of reality--the storyteller who lived through these events is more at one with the events they are pondering on. They are not getting caught up on the details or any one part of the story but instead are revealing an entire entity, as it were, for what it is.
***
What This Can Mean (AKA What I Mean)
My previous essay on my podcast The Oracle of Dusk perhaps shows the influence this thought has had on me. Or it could simply be a coincidence. The podcast and its essay show me continuing to re-engage with the worst part of my personal narrative. Consequently, I can offer a more grounded explanation for what this quote means. The story that I told in that podcast did, in fact, reveal part of me. In some sense, I am attempting to answer the question of ‘Who am I?’ by presenting an aspect of my life rather than a series of words. In some sense, I am marred by this very specific series of events, and rather than letting it dictate its resulting influence, I am reliving, reimagining, and pondering what it all means and how it has shaped me. However, as I expand this blog to consider other podcasts, I do not want to make the assumption or lead my readers to the assumption that all independent podcast creators have the same sort of relationship with their work that I do. It simply wouldn't be fair of me to speak for other creators in this way, particularly if their shows feature sensitive subjects. The stories of their stories are theirs to tell.
Ultimately, though, in a heavily connected world, engaging with life takes on an updated meaning. Arendt died in 1975, and the world has shifted drastically since then. It is inevitable that aspects of her thought will need to be adapted to this new reality. In this particular case, the birth and rise of social media is especially relevant. With it, the scope of our life has expanded tremendously when it comes to storytelling. It is not just that social media has provided more venues for storytelling as Arendt understands it, although--yes--users can post their own self-guided content; they can effectively tell their own stories in a variety of formats and that is worth considering another time. Rather, while we remain at the center of our own lives, we control tendrils that reach out far beyond our grasp, farther than those of any previous generation.
The effects of this extension manifest in a couple of ways. For one, this does introduce new frameworks or tool kits for individuals to utilize as they make sense of and relive their stories. This was the subject of my master’s thesis, and admittedly, I am a bit unclear whether I own the rights to it or if the university that gave me my degree took the publication rights in the name of the thesis database they offer current students as a resource for their projects. Perhaps I will adapt or revise it for publication here. But as an example, as an Asian woman, no doctor I have seen has thought to test me for ADHD despite the overwhelming number of symptoms I have, but it was encountering others’ familiar experiences with ADHD that I gained the vocabulary necessary to advocate for myself in this. This remains an ongoing process for me, but regardless, I’ve come to reexamine and better understand certain experiences in light of information that I found through social media.
On the other hand, this change of scope means we can better understand the forces or events that shape us in the same way a scientist would conduct an experiment to better understand the world around us. In this model, we could consider ourselves the control group, the group without the independent or adjusted variable, and those around us might serve as the experimental groups or the groups with this change. The differences in our experiences, for better or worse, can provide insight to our lives and can serve--once again--as fodder for our own imaginations and recollections.
Ultimately, I think the ‘revealed’ meanings of many contemporary independent podcasts might not necessarily rest in the stories of the creators but potentially in these additional forces or factors whose influence creators have come to better understand. It’s a bit curated, you could say, to the point that these works may take on a more impersonal nature. However, the person we are is not separated or distinct from its influences. It is a mixture of these and many things. Focusing on a specific force or aspect of life and temporarily living with that reality is a bit like the curation Dinesen shows with Out of Africa. As Arendt points out, despite it being considered autobiographical, it does not go into every detail of Dinesen’s life nor could you really expect it to (Arendt, 1968, p. 100). Every memoir will leave out certain details, even if it only leaves out the inconsequential ones. Filtering is a part of storytelling. Conceptually, it’s a shedding of sorts. Flakes peel off during repeated recollection to expose a more raw and authentic center.
This limiting, curating, or quarantining of the self in favor of this external factor might seem like I am stepping too far from Arendt’s initial meaning. To that, I would say that when it comes to this quote, I don’t particularly care if I’m perfectly loyal to Arendt’s conception or argument. I am almost fifty years and an entire world away from her. Things change. Ideas have to grow. I am my own thinker. And I will answer for my thoughts alone.
Work Cited
Arendt, H. (1968). Men in Dark Times. Harcourt Brace & Company. Purchase Link