#byung-chul han

[kafk-a]

Byung-Chul Han, from an interview published in ArtReview

[noosphe-re]

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 It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also, its inhabitants are no longer "obedience-subjects" but "achievement-subjects." They are entrepreneurs of themselves. The walls of disciplinary institutions, which separate the normal from the abnormal, have come to seem archaic. Foucault's analysis of power cannot account for the psychic and topological changes that occurred as disciplinary society transformed into achievement society. Nor does the commonly employed concept of "control society" do justice to this change. It still contains too much negativity.

Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

[exhaled-spirals]

« Today, all time-consuming practices, such as trust, loyalty, commitment and responsibility, are disappearing. […] I think trust is a social practice, and today it is being replaced by transparency and information. Trust enables us to build positive relationships with others, despite lacking knowledge. In a transparency society, one immediately asks for information from others. Trust as a social practice becomes superfluous. The transparency and information society fosters a society of distrust. »

— Byung-Chul Han, “I Practise Philosophy as Art”

[1000rh]

The totalization of production leads to the total profanation of life. Rest, too, is made to serve production and is degraded into leisure and recreational time. It is no longer the beginning of a holy period of assembly. [...] The mounting pressure to perform makes even recreational pauses impossible. Thus, many people find that they fall ill during leisure time. This illness has even been given a name: leisure sickness.

– Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals (2019)

[hyperbanal]

Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise. People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.

- Byung-chul Han

[nando161mando]

“We optimize ourselves to death. Relentless self-exploitation leads to mental collapse. Brutal competition ends in destruction. It produces an emotional coldness and indifference towards others as well as towards one’s own self.”

— Byung-chul Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive

[giuliavaldi]

Oggi corriamo dietro alle informazioni senz’approdare ad alcun sapere. Prendiamo nota di tutto senza imparare a conoscerlo. Viaggiamo ovunque senza fare vera esperienza. Comunichiamo ininterrottamente senza prendere parte a una comunità. Salviamo quantità immani di dati senza far risuonare i ricordi. Accumuliamo amici e follower senza mai incontrare l’Altro. Così le informazioni generano un modo di vivere privo di tenuta e di durata.

Byung-Chul Han, Le non cose. Come abbiamo smesso di vivere il reale

[absurdlakefront]

For Han, the more we lay ourselves out for public consumption, the more we turn into a makeshift art exhibit—an object meant purely for the enjoyment of others rather than a full agent capable of forming genuine bonds with other full agents in the world. Han states that the interplay between revealing aspects of ourselves to others while still keeping certain parts hidden—only to be possibly disclosed later—is an essential component of what he calls the eroticism of interpersonal connections. It is what maintains our agency, as we consciously decide who we will open up to, to what extent, and why. The demand for transparency—the total, naked display of our entire selves to the whole world—robs us of this freedom. It leaves us both incredibly vulnerable and transformed into a kind of obscene object, with no part of us left unobserved or reserved for a chosen few. Ultimately, Han worries that if we continue down this path of forced public intimacy, we risk commodifying our deepest and most fragile parts, serving them up for others to consume like a buffet of our deconstructed soul—all while we become ever lonelier for lack of real, committed connections with others

[yr-bed]

Rituals are architectures of time, structuring and stabilising life, and they are on the wane. The pandemic has accelerated the disappearance of rituals. Work also has ritual aspects. We go to work at set times. Work takes place in a community. In the home office, the ritual of work is completely lost. The day loses its rhythm and structure. This somehow makes us tired and depressed. In The Little Prince [1943], by [Antoine de] Saint-Exupéry, the little prince asks the fox to always visit at the exact same time, so that the visit becomes a ritual. The little prince explains to the fox what a ritual is. Rituals are to time as rooms are to an apartment. They make time accessible like a house. They organise time, arrange it. In this way you make time appear meaningful. Time today lacks a solid structure. It is not a house, but a capricious river. The disappearance of rituals does not simply mean that we have more freedom. The total flexibilisation of life brings loss, too. Rituals may restrict freedom, but they structure and stabilise life. They anchor values and symbolic systems in the body, reinforcing community. In rituals we experience community, communal closeness, physically. Digitalisation strips away the physicality of the world. Then comes the pandemic. It aggravates the loss of the physical experience of community. You’re asking: can’t we do this by ourselves? Today we reject all rituals as something external, formal and therefore inauthentic. Neoliberalism produces a culture of authenticity, which places the ego at its centre. The culture of authenticity develops a suspicion of ritualised forms of interaction. Only spontaneous emotions, subjective states, are authentic. Modelled behaviour, for example courtesy, is written off as inauthentic or superficial. The narcissistic cult of authenticity is partly responsible for the increasing brutality of society.

Byung-Chul Han

[apesoformythoughts]

“We owe true happiness to the useless and purposeless, to what is intentionally convoluted, what is unproductive, indirect, exuberant, superfluous, to beautiful forms and gestures that have no use and serve no purpose. Unlike walking to a destination, running somewhere or marching, taking a leisurely stroll is a luxury. Ceremonious inactivity means: we do something, but to no end. This 'to-no-end', this freedom from purpose and usefulness, is the essential core of inactivity. It is the basic formula for happiness.”

— Byung-Chul Han: Vita Contemplativa

[thirdity]

As consumers, today’s voters have no real interest in politics – in actively shaping the community. They possess neither the will nor the ability to participate in communal, political action. They react only passively to politics: grumbling and complaining, as consumers do about a commodity or service they do not like.

Byung-chul Han, Psychopolitics

[exhaled-spirals]

« Over three years I established a winter-flowering garden. I also wrote a book about it with the title Praise to the Earth [2018]. My understanding from being a gardener is: Earth is magic. Whoever claims otherwise is blind. Earth is not a resource, not a mere means to achieve human ends. Our relationship to nature today is not determined by astonished observation, but solely by instrumental action. […] It is not enough that we now have to be more careful with Earth as a resource. Rather, we need a completely different relationship with Earth. We should give it back its magic, its dignity. We should learn to marvel at it again. […] We should rediscover the capacity for inaction. »

— Byung-Chul Han, “I Practise Philosophy as Art”

[thoughtportal]

The agony of Eros

Byung-Chul Han

[ross-nekochan]

Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed an intelligent, system for exploiting freedom.

Byung-Chul Han - Psychopolitic (Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power)

[lunamarish]

La poesia è un evento dialogico. La comunicazione dei nostri giorni è estremamente narcisistica. Ha luogo senza un Tu, senza alcuna invocazione dell'Altro. Nella poesia, invece, Io e Tu si generano reciprocamente.

Byung-Chul Han

[sammeldeineknochen]

Die Selbstausbeutung ist effizienter als die Fremdausbeutung, denn sie geht mit dem Gefühl der Freiheit einher.

Byung-Chul Han: "Müdigkeitsgesellschaft/Burnoutgesellschaft/Hoch-Zeit", S.94