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    Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
    Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
    Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
    Ebook 92 pages 1 hour

    Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power

    By Byung-Chul Han

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    About this ebook

    Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault's biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche. In the course of discussing all the facets of neoliberal psychopolitics fueling our contemporary crisis of freedom, Han elaborates an analytical framework that provides an original theory of Big Data and a lucid phenomenology of emotion. But this provocative essay proposes counter models too, presenting a wealth of ideas and surprising alternatives at every turn.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerso UK
    Release dateNov 7, 2017
    ISBN9781784785789
    Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
    Author

    Byung-Chul Han

    Byung-Chul Han (born in 1959), studied metallurgy in Korea, then philosophy, German literature, and Catholic theology in Freiburg and Munich. He has taught philosophy at the University of Basel, and philosophy and media theory at the School for Design in Karlsruhe. In 2012, he was appointed professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. Han's other works available in English include The Burnout Society, The Transparency Society, and The Agony of Eros.

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    • 5/5
      A defining work of our time and a skeleton key to the arcane lock on the cell-door of neoliberal capitalism; if you have ever felt that something isn't quite right about the world we live in, do yourself a favor and give Byung Chul Han a few hours of your time. Perhaps you'll feel a little less alone if you do.

    Book preview

    Psychopolitics - Byung-Chul Han

    1.

    The Crisis of Freedom

    The Exploitation of Freedom

    Freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude. Freedom is felt when passing from one way of living to another – until this too turns out to be a form of coercion. Then, liberation gives way to renewed subjugation. Such is the destiny of the subject; literally, the ‘one who has been cast down’.

    Today, we do not deem ourselves subjugated subjects, but rather projects: always refashioning and reinventing ourselves. A sense of freedom attends passing from the state of subject to that of project. All the same, this projection amounts to a form of compulsion and constraint – indeed, to a more efficient kind of subjectivation and subjugation. As a project deeming itself free of external and alien limitations, the I is now subjugating itself to internal limitations and self-constraints, which are taking the form of compulsive achievement and optimization.

    We are living in a particular phase of history: freedom itself is bringing forth compulsion and constraint. The freedom of Can generates even more coercion than the disciplinarian Should, which issues commandments and prohibitions. Should has a limit. In contrast, Can has none. Thus, the compulsion entailed by Can is unlimited. And so we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. Technically, freedom means the opposite of coercion and compulsion. Being free means being free from constraint. But now freedom itself, which is supposed to be the opposite of constraint, is producing coercion. Psychic maladies such as depression and burnout express a profound crisis of freedom. They represent pathological signs that freedom is now switching over into manifold forms of compulsion.

    Although the achievement-subject deems itself free, in reality it is a slave. In so far as it willingly exploits itself without a master, it is an absolute slave. There is no master forcing the achievement-subject to work. Yet all the same, it is absolutizing bare life and labour. Bare life and labour form two sides of the same coin. Health represents the ideal of bare life. Today’s neoliberal slave lacks the sovereignty – indeed, the freedom – of the master who, according to Hegel’s dialectic, performs no labour at all and only enjoys. For Hegel, the sovereignty of the master derives from his rising above bare life and risking death itself in the process. Such excess – living and enjoying beyond measure – is alien to the slave, who worries only about bare life. But counter to what Hegel assumed, labouring does not make the slave free. The slave remains enslaved to labour. Now, the slave is forcing the master to work too. Today’s dialectic of master and slave means the totalization of labour.

    As the entrepreneur of its own self, the neoliberal subject has no capacity for relationships with others that might be free of purpose. Nor do entrepreneurs know what purpose-free friendship would even look like. Originally, being free meant being among friends. ‘Freedom’ and ‘friendship’ have the same root in Indo-European languages. Fundamentally, freedom signifies a relationship. A real feeling of freedom occurs only in a fruitful relationship – when being with others brings happiness. But today’s neoliberal regime leads to utter isolation; as such, it does not really free us at all. Accordingly, the question now is whether we need to redefine freedom – to reinvent it – in order to escape from the fatal dialectic that is changing freedom into coercion.

    Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed an intelligent, system for exploiting freedom. Everything that belongs to practices and expressive forms of liberty – emotion, play and communication – comes to be exploited. It is inefficient to exploit people against their will. Allo-exploitation yields scant returns. Only when freedom is exploited are returns maximized.

    It is interesting to note that Marx also defines freedom in terms of a successful relationship to others: ‘Only in community [with others does each] individual [have] the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible.’¹ From this perspective, being free means nothing other than self-realization with others. Freedom is synonymous with a working community (i.e., a successful one).

    For Marx, individual freedom represents a ruse – a trick of capital. ‘Free competition’, which is based on the idea of individual freedom, simply amounts to the ‘relation of capital to itself as another capital, i.e., the real conduct of capital as capital’.² Capital reproduces by entering into relations with itself as another form of Capital: through free competition. It copulates with the Other of itself by way of individual freedom. Capital grows inasmuch as people engage in free competition. Hereby, individual freedom amounts to servitude inasmuch as Capital lays hold of it and uses it for its own propagation. That is, Capital exploits individual freedom in order to breed: ‘It is not the individuals who are set free by free competition; it is, rather, capital which is set free.’³

    The freedom of Capital achieves self-realization by way of individual freedom. In the process, individuals degrade into the genital organs of Capital. Individual freedom lends it an ‘automatic’ subjectivity of its own, which spurs it to reproduce actively. In this way, Capital continuously ‘brings forth living offspring’.⁴ Today, individual freedom is taking on excessive forms; ultimately, this amounts to nothing other than the excess of Capital itself.

    The Dictatorship of Capital

    At a certain level of development, according to Marx, the forces of production (human labour, modes of work and the material means available) come into conflict with the dominant relations of production (conditions of ownership and domination). Contradiction arises because the forces of production never stop evolving. Thus, industrialization brings forth new forces of production that come into conflict with structures of ownership and government that still resemble feudal conditions. In turn, this contradiction entails social crises: pushes to change the relations of production. For Marx, the contradiction is to be eliminated by way of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie – which will bring forth a communist social order.

    But counter to what Marx assumed, communist revolution cannot resolve the contradiction between forces of production and relations of production. The contradiction admits no dialectical

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