Psychopolitics. Byung-Chul Han

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Psychopolitics

      Verso Futures

      The law of the innermost form of the essay is heresy.

      – Theodor Adorno

      Verso Futures is a series of essay-length philosophical and political interventions by both emerging and established writers and thinkers from around the world. Each title in the series addresses the outer limits of political and social possibility.

      Also available in Verso Futures:

      The Future by Marc Augé

      The State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious by Isabell Lorey

      Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi

      Déjà Vu and the End of History by Paolo Virno

      Psychopolitics

       Neoliberalism and NewTechnologies of Power

      Byung-Chul Han

      Translated by Erik Butler

      The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

      First published by Verso 2017

      © Byung-Chul Han 2017

      All rights reserved

      The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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       Verso

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      ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-577-2

      ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-576-5 (LIBRARY)

      ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-579-6 (US EBK)

      ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-578-9 (UK EBK)

       British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Han, Byung-Chul, author.

      Title: Psychopolitics : neoliberalism and new technologies of power / Byung-Chul Han.

      Other titles: Psychopolitik. English

      Description: Brooklyn : Verso Books, 2017. | Series: Futures

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017039801 | ISBN 9781784785772 (us edition)

      Subjects: LCSH: Neoliberalism. | Information technology – Social aspects.

      Classification: LCC HB95 .H3313 2017 | DDC 320.51/3 – dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039801

      Typeset in Sabon by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

      Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, UK

      Contents

      1. The Crisis of Freedom

      2. Smart Power

      3. The Mole and the Snake

      4. Biopolitics

      5. Foucault’s Dilemma

       6. Healing as Killing

       7. Shock

       8. Friendly Big Brother

       9. Emotional Capitalism

       10. Gamification

       11. Big Data

       12. Beyond the Subject

       13. Idiotism

       Notes

      Protect me from what I want.

      Jenny Holzer

       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.