In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Kitsch Theory
  • Ben Ware (bio)
Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, trans. Erik Butler, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015, 72pp, £9.99/$12.99
Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, trans. Eric Butler, London, Verso, 2017, 80pp, £9.99/$16.99

The Korean-born German philosopher, Byung-Chul Han, writes short, essay-length books that are widely read and enthusiastically received. Han's Die Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (published by Stanford University Press as The Burnout Society in 2015) has been translated into more than ten languages; of the three books that followed-The Transparency Society (2015), In the Swarm: Digital Prospects (2017) and The Agony of Eros (2017)-two were published by MIT Press, one (The Agony of Eros) with a foreword by Alain Badiou. His 2017 book, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, appeared with Verso in its Verso Futures series-a series which describes itself as publishing 'interventions' which 'address the outer limits of political and social possibility'. On the Verso website, Han is described as 'a star of German philosophy' whose work provides 'a passionate critique of neoliberalism'. Given the high praise, what, we might ask, are Han's specific contributions to current theoretical and political debates? What key questions (or sets of questions) do his works pivot around, and what solutions do they offer? And what, more broadly, might Han's popularity reveal both about his work and the present state of theory? My discussion here will be limited to two of the above-mentioned texts, which, I believe, provide the best introduction to the author's thinking: The Burnout Society and Psychopolitics.

In The Burnout Society, Han argues that 'today's society is no longer Foucault's disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls and genetic laboratories' (p8). Twenty-first century society is, Han informs us, 'no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society' (p8). With the emergence of the achievement society comes a new discursive regime: disciplinary society's negative prohibition 'May Not', linked to the imperative 'Should', gives way to the positive modal verb 'Can' (as in the affirmative 'Yes, we can'). But this apparent break turns out to be nothing more than a continuity, rhetorically serving the interests of capital's own implacable drive:

the positivity of Can is much more efficient than the negativity of ShouldCan increases the level of productivity which is the aim of disciplinary [End Page 175] technology, that is, the imperative of Should. Where productivity is concerned, no break exists between Should and Can

(p9).

This unification of old and new extends from the domain of the signifier to the realm of freedom itself. In the achievement society, the subject stands free from any instance of external domination-it becomes its own lord and master; however, the disappearance of domination does not entail the liberation of the subject. Rather, (new) freedom and (old) constraint come to coincide: 'the achievement subject gives itself over to compulsive freedom-that is, the free constraint of maximising achievement. Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation' (p11). The result, then, is a more 'efficient' form of exploitation in which exploiter and exploited, perpetrator and victim, become all but indistinguishable.

So while the subject in the achievement society deems itself free, it is in reality a slave; and indeed, as Han puts it in Psychopolitics, 'an absolute slave' (p2), as it 'willingly exploits itself without a master'. Late capitalist 'freedom' thus generates more coercion and compulsion than the old disciplinary model could ever dream. This unfreedom as 'freedom'-bound up with endless work and voluntary self-exploitation-along with excess positivity-held in place by the unlimited I Can-radically transforms what The Burnout Society terms 'the structure and economy of attention' (p12) and affect. Boredom, which for Benjamin was the 'dream bird that hatches the egg of experience' (p13), is no longer tolerated; immersive reflection gives way to hyperattention, characterised by rapid focus-switching between different 'tasks', a preference for multiple 'information streams', and the seeking of a constant high-level...

pdf

Share