Notes for a Declaration of the Rights and Responsibilities of Story-tellers   Who is a story-teller and what are a story-teller's rights and responsibilities? A story-teller is someone who tells stories and re-elaborates myths, i.e. stories with symbolic referents shared - or at least known, or even put into question - by a community. To tell stories is a fundamental activity for any community. We all tell stories, without stories we would not be conscious of our past nor of our relations with our neighbors. Quality of life would not exist. But story-tellers make telling stories their activity, their specialization; it is like the difference between the hobby of DIY repair and the work of a carpenter. The story-teller recovers - or should recover - a social function comparable that of the griot in African villages, the bard in Celtic culture or the poet in the classical Greek world. Telling stories is a peculiar work, that can benefit the one who develops it, but it is always a labor, as integrated into the life of the community as putting out fires, ploughing fields, attending to the disabled …. In other words, the story-teller is not an artist. The story-teller is an artisan of narration. Responsibilities Story-tellers have the responsibility of not believing themselves superior to their fellow humans. Any concession to the obsolete idealist and romantic image of the story-teller as a more sensitive creature, in contact with a more elevated dimension of being (even when writing about absolutely quotidian banalities) is illegitimate. At bottom, the most ridiculous and comical aspects of the business of writing are based on a degraded version of the myth of the artist, which converts the artist into a 'star' because he is believed to be somehow superior to common mortals, less wretched, more interesting and sincere in a certain heroic sense, since he endures the torments of creation. The stereotype of the tortured and tormented artist rouses greater interest in the media and has greater weight of opinion than the labor of those who clean septic tanks. This proves the degree to which the present scale of values is distorted. The story-teller has the responsibility to not confuse fabulation, the story-teller’s principle mission, with an excess of obsessive autobiography and narcissistic ostentation. Renouncing these attitudes permits the story-teller to save the authenticity of the moment, to have a life instead of a character to interpret compulsively. Rights A story-teller that complies with the responsibility to refute the stereotypes cited above has the right to be left in peace by those that earn their daily bread by spreading those same stereotypes (society columnists, cultural go-betweens, etc etc…). Any strategy of defense against intrusions should be based on not supporting this logic. Whoever wants to act as a star, posing in absurd photography sessions or responding to questions on any issue, has no right to lament the intrusion. Story-tellers have the right not to appear in the media. If a plumber decides not to appear, no one throws it in his face or accuse him of being a snob. Story-tellers have the right not to convert themselves into trained animals in a media cage, objects of literary gossip. Story-tellers have the right not to respond to questions that they consider as not pertinent (private life, sexual or gastronomic preferences…). Story-tellers have the right not to feign expertise on any material. Story-tellers have the right to use civil disobedience to oppose the pretensions of those (publishers included) who want to deprive them of their rights. Wu Ming Spring 2000 Translated by Nate Holdren & WM1, September 2004                  Back to Main Menu