Stories that Move the World
Modernity has unfurled under the form of major stories that model the world. Postmodernity questions and fragments these, sparking cultural debates that define the end of the last century. And the new millennium finds us immersed in a landscape where all that is solid has not vanished into thin air, but into the minds and bodies of a beleaguered humanity.
We are witnesses of a time where the term story is invoked with enthusiasm. The media drum, its beat strengthened by the expansion of the digital galaxy, has found one of its most productive talismans: everything is – or can be – capable of being turned into a story, in other words into accounts, narratives, fictions or tales that aim to make sense of the world that we have created.
There are stories in every area and for every taste. Stories that fight for hegemony, stories of power and money, stories of a future where only a few will be saved, stories where artificial intelligence will take control, stories of a more or less imminent collapse fuelled by the proliferation of dystopias. And, however, an uncontainable flood of tales also exists inspired by the supreme power of life, by the magnificence of the universe that we inhabit, stories where human conscience redefines its place in the cosmos, yet again. Stories from the most neglected realms, from the inalterable desire for emancipation, from the deep yearning for knowledge, from the emotion and the amazement of remaining ensconced in a great mystery.
There is a mixture of scales, measures, tenets, theories, dogmas, prescriptions and paradigms. Somewhere between the chance controlled by no one and the determinism that predicts everything, stands literature, in its most open conception, which reminds us of our condition of vulnerability and, at the same time, of the tools (private and shared) that we have at our disposal to criticise, modify or reinvent the stories that move the world.
Welcome to the tenth edition of Kosmopolis, the amplified literature fest.
Juan Insua
Director
