his eyes fell on the top story of the
house at the edge of the quarry the
casement window flew open like a light
flashing on a human figure faint and and
substantial at that distance and height
forced itself far out and stretched its
arms out even further who was it
a friend a good man one who sympathized
one who wanted to help was it one person
was it everybody was there still help
were there objections which had been
forgotten certainly there were logic is
of course unshakable but it cannot hold
out against a man who wants to live
where was the judge he had never seen
where it was the High Court he had never
reached he raised his hands and spread
his fingers wide this is the second to
last paragraph of Deputies s or the
trial a book written by Franz Kafka it
tells the story of a man called Joseph
Kaye who is convicted one day and put on
trial because of a crime he allegedly
committed throughout the book case only
purpose is to find out what that crime
is that he’s thought guilty of having
committed and to prove his innocence in
order to avoid punishment
Kaye sees himself in the necessity to
come in contact with the many faces of
an obscure and very complicated system
from which he never really gets an
answer to the question of what he did
wrong despite of all his efforts right
after what I just read in the end of the
book Kaye is executed in that quarry by
two men of the government dressed in
black for a wrongdoing that he never
really knew of and without having been
able to prove his innocence I read this
book when I was about 14 years old I had
my mother buy it for me actually and
I was curious to read something by Kafka
even though I didn’t really know who he
was or what he wrote about my mother on
the other hand will she was mainly the
one who passed on me the habit of
reading she had read Kafka and she had
read this book and so when I told her
that I wanted to read it she said that
perhaps it would be better if I read it
later when I was a bit more mentally
mature and prepared to deal with such a
thing
however as any fourteen-year-old
receiving advice from his parents I
decided to do the exact opposite thing
and I read the book and as a result of
which I experienced true anxiety and
uneasiness for weeks this was the first
book that made me see the sheer power
that a story can have on a person it was
this book together with many of the
others that I read during that period of
my life that brought me to the decision
to study literature and to my surprise
that wasn’t a very popular choice
amongst the people in my social circle
back then however I was convinced that
it was the right choice for me mainly
because during my encounter with Kafka
and with the other authors that I had
read by then I had developed a very
intense passion for the art of
storytelling and for stories in general
I wanted to know how it was that a story
could call somebody anguish like it did
to me or any other strong emotion it was
out of this interest and fascination for
stories that I made two assumptions that
justified my decision to study
literature I like stories and the best
place to find stories is of course in
literature and following that only by
studying literature will I be able to
learn how to approach them critically
how to analyze them correctly and put
them apart into little pieces like a
mechanic would do to a car engine today
I would like to talk to you about these
two assumptions why both of them are
wrong and why I believe it is
nevertheless important to think about
the relevance of stories through these
assumptions so first of all do you think
that the best place to find services in
literature is not
completely wrong I would say the history
of literature is that of the great
stories that have moved and captivated
generations and societies through time
so yes
stories are definitely to be found in
literature but it would be very naive
and dangerous to think like I did that
their presence and their influence is
limited to books there are some very
obvious examples of stories outside
literature that probably everybody here
can relate to think about the story of
how your parents met or the story of
your last breakup or the stories that
you tell your friends when you’re
catching up after a long time of not
having seen each other the telling of
all of these everyday anecdotes is at
its core not that different from Kafka’s
book both share the same basic features
that make up a story they have a
narrative instance which means that they
are told to us by somebody by some kind
of narrator or some entity they have a
setting which means that they take place
in a certain space and time either
fictional or real they have characters
or actors who experience change through
the passage of time or through their own
actions and those actions and those
happenings are the ones that make up the
plot of the story both in Kafka’s book
as well as in many of the anecdotes that
you tell to your friends these everyday
stories that we get in contact with
through the people close to us
I just says an example of the relevance
of stories outside literature they are a
small proof of how wrong I was with my
first assumption when I started studying
the truth is that we are exposed to
stories every single day not only
through literature and not only through
the people that we know stories are also
in our media they are in our politics
they are in our societies sometimes
there are even rooted already deep
within us without us having noticed the
reason why I find it so important to
talk about this is because not all of
the stories that we come in
contact with are as innocent as the
anecdotes that you tell your friends or
as harmless as a story in a novel there
is already one great TED talk on this
topic by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie where she talks about the
dangers of the stories that we are told
especially taking into consideration how
vulnerable and impressionable we are in
the face of a story
the examples that Aditi mentions in her
talk belong to the group that I would
describe as the stories that go beyond
the purpose of entertaining us and
informing us the stories that are made
to shape our perception of reality and
change the way we look at our
surroundings the stories are normally
told by people or groups of people who
are empowered and who want to have their
actions or their views toward certain
things justified like the story that an
innocent meant it’s actually all of the
sudden guilty of having committed a
terrible but mysterious crime and that
he has to be punished by death because
because of what he did or coming to
reality the ridiculous story that people
of a certain religion do not belong in
this country or that the story that
Mexican migrants like myself are
actually mostly rapists and criminals
who are to be compared with animals and
have haven’t got much to offer these are
also the stories that we come in contact
with every single day regardless of
whether you like to read Kafka or not
there are many things that make these
stories so dangerous and so poisonous
first of all they like to be told in
disguise as if they were something else
something more than stories as if they
were the objective description of a
situation or an unquestionable truth or
even scientific evidence or a law in a
constitution and second of all these
stories tend to appeal and relate to
entire groups of people of real people
and in doing so these collective
narratives become particular
be dangerous because they simplify our
reality by putting things in two
extremes the characters of those stories
tend to be either friends or foes and
the plot tends to be us against the
others
so after this at least it should become
clear that I was very simple-minded in
doing my first assumption when I started
studying literature is not the best or
the only place to find stories in fact
they are everywhere we see our worlds
through them and we all have a very
natural need to tell stories and to have
stories told to us and so taking this
into consideration I would like to come
now to finish to my second assumption
which I think not only is but should be
wrong when I started studying literature
or when I made the decision to study
literature more than once I was
confronted by either grownups or people
my age who gave me skeptical looks and
asked me questions like what do you plan
to do with your life after having
studied literature or what is the point
of studying literature and the
humanities in the 21st century
the question that was probably the
hardest for me to answer back then was
why would you want to devote time to
study literature at a university if you
can grab a book and read it and
understand it and think about it without
having a degree from a university that
certifies that you know how to do that I
think that is a very valid point up to a
certain extent I wouldn’t say that I
haven’t done anything of importance in
the last three years of studying
literature or that everything that I
have learned I could have learned by
myself however for the particular
purpose of looking at stories and that
the way we interact with them every
single day I think that this argument
that was made to me back then becomes a
lot more relevant the truth is that you
don’t have to have studied literature in
order to be critical or analytical about
stories that
wrong you don’t even have to be
particularly smites so if this is
something that we are all able to do
then we all have the same responsibility
to actually do it
if stories are not only to be found in
literature but everywhere if we are
exposed to them if we explain ourselves
our world through stories then why would
it be reasonable that only the people
who study literature should be the ones
who are critical about them why should
everyone else read and hear these
stories without trying to question what
they tell how they tell it or why they
are telling it and let me be clear this
doesn’t mean that I believe that right
now only the people who study literature
are the ones who are critical about
stories but I do believe that at the
bottom of this there is a standard that
we need to escape from a generalized
conception that the humanities and
therefore literature have little use in
the 21st century in the digital era that
they are pointless or obsolete and I
think it is actually the other way
around
I think literature narrative analysis
for instance is of particular importance
today when many of the stories that we
face just like the story of Joseph’s
case trial can cause a person anguish
and pain and are in many cases just as
fictional which means that they are just
not true the next time that you see a
speech any possible speech by the
current president of the United States
of America or the next time that you
read an article about the catastrophic
situation in a developing country or
that you think about what you already
know about countries in the African
continent or in a certain region like
the Middle East or when you hear about
what happened in Gaza last week try
looking at all of those things like what
many of them are stories be able to
recognize them from facts and from
scientific evidence look at the
characters that they are presenting see
who is being present
the hero and who is being presented as
the villain look at the narrative
instance and ask yourself what its
motivations could be for telling this
story in particular be aware of the
story as a whole and not just as a bit a
bit of it and of other stories that
relate to the same thing in order to get
a wider perspective all of those little
things are just simple ways in which we
can all fulfill our shared
responsibility and this world of ours
that is mostly made out of stories I
don’t know if you remember what I read
at the beginning from Kafka’s book right
before Joseph K is executed right before
a story justifies his death k sees the
figure by the window in the house at the
edge of the quarry and he gets a glimpse
of hope
he asks themselves if that person who
could also be everybody knows an
objection which had been forgotten and
that could save him he races in sands
and stretches his fingers right before
the end I think that we should make all
the best of our efforts to make sure
that this wonderful thinking tool that
we all possess that we can use to tell
the most beautiful tales and to see our
reality that it can no longer be used so
easily for wrong that we know for
certain that no single story can justify
the pain or the suffering of a person
and that if we ever get to be the person
by the window and the house at the edge
of the quarry that we’re actually able
to help thank you very much [Applause]
house at the edge of the quarry the
casement window flew open like a light
flashing on a human figure faint and and
substantial at that distance and height
forced itself far out and stretched its
arms out even further who was it
a friend a good man one who sympathized
one who wanted to help was it one person
was it everybody was there still help
were there objections which had been
forgotten certainly there were logic is
of course unshakable but it cannot hold
out against a man who wants to live
where was the judge he had never seen
where it was the High Court he had never
reached he raised his hands and spread
his fingers wide this is the second to
last paragraph of Deputies s or the
trial a book written by Franz Kafka it
tells the story of a man called Joseph
Kaye who is convicted one day and put on
trial because of a crime he allegedly
committed throughout the book case only
purpose is to find out what that crime
is that he’s thought guilty of having
committed and to prove his innocence in
order to avoid punishment
Kaye sees himself in the necessity to
come in contact with the many faces of
an obscure and very complicated system
from which he never really gets an
answer to the question of what he did
wrong despite of all his efforts right
after what I just read in the end of the
book Kaye is executed in that quarry by
two men of the government dressed in
black for a wrongdoing that he never
really knew of and without having been
able to prove his innocence I read this
book when I was about 14 years old I had
my mother buy it for me actually and
I was curious to read something by Kafka
even though I didn’t really know who he
was or what he wrote about my mother on
the other hand will she was mainly the
one who passed on me the habit of
reading she had read Kafka and she had
read this book and so when I told her
that I wanted to read it she said that
perhaps it would be better if I read it
later when I was a bit more mentally
mature and prepared to deal with such a
thing
however as any fourteen-year-old
receiving advice from his parents I
decided to do the exact opposite thing
and I read the book and as a result of
which I experienced true anxiety and
uneasiness for weeks this was the first
book that made me see the sheer power
that a story can have on a person it was
this book together with many of the
others that I read during that period of
my life that brought me to the decision
to study literature and to my surprise
that wasn’t a very popular choice
amongst the people in my social circle
back then however I was convinced that
it was the right choice for me mainly
because during my encounter with Kafka
and with the other authors that I had
read by then I had developed a very
intense passion for the art of
storytelling and for stories in general
I wanted to know how it was that a story
could call somebody anguish like it did
to me or any other strong emotion it was
out of this interest and fascination for
stories that I made two assumptions that
justified my decision to study
literature I like stories and the best
place to find stories is of course in
literature and following that only by
studying literature will I be able to
learn how to approach them critically
how to analyze them correctly and put
them apart into little pieces like a
mechanic would do to a car engine today
I would like to talk to you about these
two assumptions why both of them are
wrong and why I believe it is
nevertheless important to think about
the relevance of stories through these
assumptions so first of all do you think
that the best place to find services in
literature is not
completely wrong I would say the history
of literature is that of the great
stories that have moved and captivated
generations and societies through time
so yes
stories are definitely to be found in
literature but it would be very naive
and dangerous to think like I did that
their presence and their influence is
limited to books there are some very
obvious examples of stories outside
literature that probably everybody here
can relate to think about the story of
how your parents met or the story of
your last breakup or the stories that
you tell your friends when you’re
catching up after a long time of not
having seen each other the telling of
all of these everyday anecdotes is at
its core not that different from Kafka’s
book both share the same basic features
that make up a story they have a
narrative instance which means that they
are told to us by somebody by some kind
of narrator or some entity they have a
setting which means that they take place
in a certain space and time either
fictional or real they have characters
or actors who experience change through
the passage of time or through their own
actions and those actions and those
happenings are the ones that make up the
plot of the story both in Kafka’s book
as well as in many of the anecdotes that
you tell to your friends these everyday
stories that we get in contact with
through the people close to us
I just says an example of the relevance
of stories outside literature they are a
small proof of how wrong I was with my
first assumption when I started studying
the truth is that we are exposed to
stories every single day not only
through literature and not only through
the people that we know stories are also
in our media they are in our politics
they are in our societies sometimes
there are even rooted already deep
within us without us having noticed the
reason why I find it so important to
talk about this is because not all of
the stories that we come in
contact with are as innocent as the
anecdotes that you tell your friends or
as harmless as a story in a novel there
is already one great TED talk on this
topic by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie where she talks about the
dangers of the stories that we are told
especially taking into consideration how
vulnerable and impressionable we are in
the face of a story
the examples that Aditi mentions in her
talk belong to the group that I would
describe as the stories that go beyond
the purpose of entertaining us and
informing us the stories that are made
to shape our perception of reality and
change the way we look at our
surroundings the stories are normally
told by people or groups of people who
are empowered and who want to have their
actions or their views toward certain
things justified like the story that an
innocent meant it’s actually all of the
sudden guilty of having committed a
terrible but mysterious crime and that
he has to be punished by death because
because of what he did or coming to
reality the ridiculous story that people
of a certain religion do not belong in
this country or that the story that
Mexican migrants like myself are
actually mostly rapists and criminals
who are to be compared with animals and
have haven’t got much to offer these are
also the stories that we come in contact
with every single day regardless of
whether you like to read Kafka or not
there are many things that make these
stories so dangerous and so poisonous
first of all they like to be told in
disguise as if they were something else
something more than stories as if they
were the objective description of a
situation or an unquestionable truth or
even scientific evidence or a law in a
constitution and second of all these
stories tend to appeal and relate to
entire groups of people of real people
and in doing so these collective
narratives become particular
be dangerous because they simplify our
reality by putting things in two
extremes the characters of those stories
tend to be either friends or foes and
the plot tends to be us against the
others
so after this at least it should become
clear that I was very simple-minded in
doing my first assumption when I started
studying literature is not the best or
the only place to find stories in fact
they are everywhere we see our worlds
through them and we all have a very
natural need to tell stories and to have
stories told to us and so taking this
into consideration I would like to come
now to finish to my second assumption
which I think not only is but should be
wrong when I started studying literature
or when I made the decision to study
literature more than once I was
confronted by either grownups or people
my age who gave me skeptical looks and
asked me questions like what do you plan
to do with your life after having
studied literature or what is the point
of studying literature and the
humanities in the 21st century
the question that was probably the
hardest for me to answer back then was
why would you want to devote time to
study literature at a university if you
can grab a book and read it and
understand it and think about it without
having a degree from a university that
certifies that you know how to do that I
think that is a very valid point up to a
certain extent I wouldn’t say that I
haven’t done anything of importance in
the last three years of studying
literature or that everything that I
have learned I could have learned by
myself however for the particular
purpose of looking at stories and that
the way we interact with them every
single day I think that this argument
that was made to me back then becomes a
lot more relevant the truth is that you
don’t have to have studied literature in
order to be critical or analytical about
stories that
wrong you don’t even have to be
particularly smites so if this is
something that we are all able to do
then we all have the same responsibility
to actually do it
if stories are not only to be found in
literature but everywhere if we are
exposed to them if we explain ourselves
our world through stories then why would
it be reasonable that only the people
who study literature should be the ones
who are critical about them why should
everyone else read and hear these
stories without trying to question what
they tell how they tell it or why they
are telling it and let me be clear this
doesn’t mean that I believe that right
now only the people who study literature
are the ones who are critical about
stories but I do believe that at the
bottom of this there is a standard that
we need to escape from a generalized
conception that the humanities and
therefore literature have little use in
the 21st century in the digital era that
they are pointless or obsolete and I
think it is actually the other way
around
I think literature narrative analysis
for instance is of particular importance
today when many of the stories that we
face just like the story of Joseph’s
case trial can cause a person anguish
and pain and are in many cases just as
fictional which means that they are just
not true the next time that you see a
speech any possible speech by the
current president of the United States
of America or the next time that you
read an article about the catastrophic
situation in a developing country or
that you think about what you already
know about countries in the African
continent or in a certain region like
the Middle East or when you hear about
what happened in Gaza last week try
looking at all of those things like what
many of them are stories be able to
recognize them from facts and from
scientific evidence look at the
characters that they are presenting see
who is being present
the hero and who is being presented as
the villain look at the narrative
instance and ask yourself what its
motivations could be for telling this
story in particular be aware of the
story as a whole and not just as a bit a
bit of it and of other stories that
relate to the same thing in order to get
a wider perspective all of those little
things are just simple ways in which we
can all fulfill our shared
responsibility and this world of ours
that is mostly made out of stories I
don’t know if you remember what I read
at the beginning from Kafka’s book right
before Joseph K is executed right before
a story justifies his death k sees the
figure by the window in the house at the
edge of the quarry and he gets a glimpse
of hope
he asks themselves if that person who
could also be everybody knows an
objection which had been forgotten and
that could save him he races in sands
and stretches his fingers right before
the end I think that we should make all
the best of our efforts to make sure
that this wonderful thinking tool that
we all possess that we can use to tell
the most beautiful tales and to see our
reality that it can no longer be used so
easily for wrong that we know for
certain that no single story can justify
the pain or the suffering of a person
and that if we ever get to be the person
by the window and the house at the edge
of the quarry that we’re actually able
to help thank you very much [Applause]
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