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Psicopolítica: Neoliberalismo y nuevas técnicas de poder
La psicopolítica es un poder inteligente, sutil y silencioso, que es capaz de penetrar en nuestra psique para explotarla y controlarla sin que nos demos cuenta, seduciéndonos incluso para que colaboremos con ella voluntariamente.
El filósofo Byung-Chul Han dirige ahora su mirada crítica hacia las nuevas técnicas de poder del capitalismo neoliberal, que dan acceso a la esfera de la psique, convirtiéndola en su mayor fuerza de producción. La psicopolítica es, según Han, aquel sistema de dominación que, en lugar de emplear el poder opresor, utiliza un poder seductor, inteligente (smart), que consigue que los hombres se sometan por sí mismos al entramado de dominación.
El filósofo Byung-Chul Han dirige ahora su mirada crítica hacia las nuevas técnicas de poder del capitalismo neoliberal, que dan acceso a la esfera de la psique, convirtiéndola en su mayor fuerza de producción. La psicopolítica es, según Han, aquel sistema de dominación que, en lugar de emplear el poder opresor, utiliza un poder seductor, inteligente (smart), que consigue que los hombres se sometan por sí mismos al entramado de dominación.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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About the author
Byung-Chul Han
57 books4,824 followersByung-Chul Han, also spelled Pyŏng-ch'ŏl Han (born 1959 in Seoul), is a German author, cultural theorist, and Professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) in Berlin, Germany.
Byung-Chul Han studied metallurgy in Korea before he moved to Germany in the 1980s to study Philosophy, German Literature and Catholic theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich. He received his doctoral degree at Freiburg with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger in 1994.
In 2000, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Basel, where he completed his Habilitation. In 2010 he became a faculty member at the HfG Karlsruhe, where his areas of interest were philosophy of the 18th, 19th and 20th century, ethics, social philosophy, phenomenology, cultural theory, aesthetics, religion, media theory, and intercultural philosophy. Since 2012 he teaches philosophy and cultural studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), where he directs the newly established Studium Generale general-studies program.
Han is the author of sixteen books, of which the most recent are treatises on what he terms a "society of tiredness" (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), a "society of transparency" (Transparenzgesellschaft), and on his neologist concept of shanzai, which seeks to identify modes of deconstruction in contemporary practices of Chinese capitalism.
Han's current work focuses on transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.
Until recently, he refused to give radio and television interviews and rarely divulges any biographical or personal details, including his date of birth, in public.
Han has written on topics such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline, burnout, depression, exhaustion, internet, love, pop culture, power, rationality, religion, social media, subjectivity, tiredness, transparency and violence.
Byung-Chul Han studied metallurgy in Korea before he moved to Germany in the 1980s to study Philosophy, German Literature and Catholic theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich. He received his doctoral degree at Freiburg with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger in 1994.
In 2000, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Basel, where he completed his Habilitation. In 2010 he became a faculty member at the HfG Karlsruhe, where his areas of interest were philosophy of the 18th, 19th and 20th century, ethics, social philosophy, phenomenology, cultural theory, aesthetics, religion, media theory, and intercultural philosophy. Since 2012 he teaches philosophy and cultural studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), where he directs the newly established Studium Generale general-studies program.
Han is the author of sixteen books, of which the most recent are treatises on what he terms a "society of tiredness" (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), a "society of transparency" (Transparenzgesellschaft), and on his neologist concept of shanzai, which seeks to identify modes of deconstruction in contemporary practices of Chinese capitalism.
Han's current work focuses on transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.
Until recently, he refused to give radio and television interviews and rarely divulges any biographical or personal details, including his date of birth, in public.
Han has written on topics such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline, burnout, depression, exhaustion, internet, love, pop culture, power, rationality, religion, social media, subjectivity, tiredness, transparency and violence.
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November 22, 2018
One of the last things Foucault come up with was the idea of biopolitics. The short version is that much of the regulation of society is concerned with the regulation of the body. This book references that idea by Foucault, as should be obvious from the name of this one. The point being that biopolitics, because it focuses on disciplining bodies, is really now an old and outmoded way of social control, and so today social control is better understood as focused more on our souls than on our bodies.
Now, Foucault would probably just shrug at this. He might, for instance, refer Han to his ‘Discipline and Punish’ which starts off by documenting how punishment had once been about punishing bodies, but has since moved more and more towards ‘the panopticon’ where people became subjects by subjugating themselves to the self-surveillance of social norms and expectations. Han basically says that this is all true enough, but that we have now moved beyond the panopticon. That is, the panopticon was a prison where there was always the possibility that the guard you could not see would one day appear at your cell door and punish you for the transgressions you had made. There was always the possibility that Big Brother would eventually stomp on your face with their jackboot for all eternity. But today’s panopticon is significantly different from that of 1984. We are not forced to install spy cameras in our houses, we actively choose to install them ourselves, we are not required to make confessions, we freely confess all we know and do, and we even attach increasingly more sophisticated measuring devices to our bodies so as to more fully track ourselves, the exercise we do, our location, even photographing what we eat, even measuring the depth of our sleep, so we can more fully report on our state of being.
But even this is only part of the problem. We once made sense of the world less by counting than by recounting – a recount is a story, and stories are never just additive, but rather narrative. Today we are ‘free’ in strange ways. Free in ways that almost avoid the possibility of choice. This sounds strange at first, but the point is that the world of big data is a world of correlations and those correlations stand almost without causation. Rather than us knowing why we do things, big data can predict we will do things. That is, the data can tell us that two things go together, even if it doesn’t tell us why they go together. And what that means is that we can be made to do things, not so much against our will, but without either us, or the people who want to make us do those things, ever knowing why we are doing them. That is, big data is about counting, rather than recounting, it is about knowing we will do certain things even if not know why we might do them – and so big data can get us to do things in ways that make us still feel ‘free’, even though we have had our buttons pressed so that we behave as predicted and as required, even if this remains to us truly subconscious.
All spheres of life are starting to resemble each other. There once had been a distinction between what it meant to be a citizen and what it meant to be a customer, but now those look increasingly alike. Big data, again, has access to our deepest desires and even though it does not necessarily understanding why we desire certain things, it doesn’t care either. All that matters are the correlations, the cause can be left for the sociologists or theologians to argue over, take your pick, both are as irrelevant to the transaction in progress as the other.
And that transaction is also becoming increasingly about desire rather than the thing in itself. We have moved from ‘use values’ to ‘emotive values’, we no longer buy things to satisfy our physical needs, but rather are psychological needs. And this moves through all of society, so that even ‘rational management techniques are being replace by emotional management’ – and the whole EQ movement has become but one manifestation of this.
The chapter of this I found most interesting was the one that came immediately after this idea of the emotions as the productive force of late modern capitalism. It talked about the gamification of society and of capitalism. And this is something else I’ve been reading a lot about lately – how work will increasingly be made to be a kind of game. Where the shift to an information society will mean that finding ways to get people to fill in the sorts of dreary forms necessary for big data to gain its data, will mean finding ways to turn this boredom into challenging and rewarding game frontends. Games aren’t rational, they get us to be emotionally engaged. As he says at one point, this means that the Marxist revolution to transform society is becoming increasingly impossible, because labour is increasingly becoming the kind of game it is becoming harder and harder to ever escape from. Or as he says, we are moving away from being exploited by others to being the main instrument of our own exploitation, from allo- to auto-exploitative.
He ends by talking of the idiot as a possible way out of what looks otherwise as a kind of dystopian labyrinth and nightmare – I didn’t really understand this part of the book at all, to be honest. But the dystopian parts of the book up until then might have already cast me too far into the abyss of despair, so that whatever hope he might have been offering at the end simply wasn’t enough to drag me back out into the light.
And talking of despair, the bit of this book that I have thought about quite a bit since I first read it about two months ago is the idea that there is a difference between anxiety and fear. You see, fear always has an object – and since we have been talking about 1984 a bit in this review, the idea of fear and rats is a case in point. But anxiety might not have any concrete referent at all. We might have no idea why we are feeling anxious, but that doesn’t make anxiety less of a problem than fear, but rather infinitely more of a problem. Anxiety doesn’t go away when you remove yourself from the object you fear – anxiety just hangs around, eating away at your soul, and not providing you with any reason to explain its power.
There is so much more to this book, but I did need to finally get around to writing this review.
Now, Foucault would probably just shrug at this. He might, for instance, refer Han to his ‘Discipline and Punish’ which starts off by documenting how punishment had once been about punishing bodies, but has since moved more and more towards ‘the panopticon’ where people became subjects by subjugating themselves to the self-surveillance of social norms and expectations. Han basically says that this is all true enough, but that we have now moved beyond the panopticon. That is, the panopticon was a prison where there was always the possibility that the guard you could not see would one day appear at your cell door and punish you for the transgressions you had made. There was always the possibility that Big Brother would eventually stomp on your face with their jackboot for all eternity. But today’s panopticon is significantly different from that of 1984. We are not forced to install spy cameras in our houses, we actively choose to install them ourselves, we are not required to make confessions, we freely confess all we know and do, and we even attach increasingly more sophisticated measuring devices to our bodies so as to more fully track ourselves, the exercise we do, our location, even photographing what we eat, even measuring the depth of our sleep, so we can more fully report on our state of being.
But even this is only part of the problem. We once made sense of the world less by counting than by recounting – a recount is a story, and stories are never just additive, but rather narrative. Today we are ‘free’ in strange ways. Free in ways that almost avoid the possibility of choice. This sounds strange at first, but the point is that the world of big data is a world of correlations and those correlations stand almost without causation. Rather than us knowing why we do things, big data can predict we will do things. That is, the data can tell us that two things go together, even if it doesn’t tell us why they go together. And what that means is that we can be made to do things, not so much against our will, but without either us, or the people who want to make us do those things, ever knowing why we are doing them. That is, big data is about counting, rather than recounting, it is about knowing we will do certain things even if not know why we might do them – and so big data can get us to do things in ways that make us still feel ‘free’, even though we have had our buttons pressed so that we behave as predicted and as required, even if this remains to us truly subconscious.
All spheres of life are starting to resemble each other. There once had been a distinction between what it meant to be a citizen and what it meant to be a customer, but now those look increasingly alike. Big data, again, has access to our deepest desires and even though it does not necessarily understanding why we desire certain things, it doesn’t care either. All that matters are the correlations, the cause can be left for the sociologists or theologians to argue over, take your pick, both are as irrelevant to the transaction in progress as the other.
And that transaction is also becoming increasingly about desire rather than the thing in itself. We have moved from ‘use values’ to ‘emotive values’, we no longer buy things to satisfy our physical needs, but rather are psychological needs. And this moves through all of society, so that even ‘rational management techniques are being replace by emotional management’ – and the whole EQ movement has become but one manifestation of this.
The chapter of this I found most interesting was the one that came immediately after this idea of the emotions as the productive force of late modern capitalism. It talked about the gamification of society and of capitalism. And this is something else I’ve been reading a lot about lately – how work will increasingly be made to be a kind of game. Where the shift to an information society will mean that finding ways to get people to fill in the sorts of dreary forms necessary for big data to gain its data, will mean finding ways to turn this boredom into challenging and rewarding game frontends. Games aren’t rational, they get us to be emotionally engaged. As he says at one point, this means that the Marxist revolution to transform society is becoming increasingly impossible, because labour is increasingly becoming the kind of game it is becoming harder and harder to ever escape from. Or as he says, we are moving away from being exploited by others to being the main instrument of our own exploitation, from allo- to auto-exploitative.
He ends by talking of the idiot as a possible way out of what looks otherwise as a kind of dystopian labyrinth and nightmare – I didn’t really understand this part of the book at all, to be honest. But the dystopian parts of the book up until then might have already cast me too far into the abyss of despair, so that whatever hope he might have been offering at the end simply wasn’t enough to drag me back out into the light.
And talking of despair, the bit of this book that I have thought about quite a bit since I first read it about two months ago is the idea that there is a difference between anxiety and fear. You see, fear always has an object – and since we have been talking about 1984 a bit in this review, the idea of fear and rats is a case in point. But anxiety might not have any concrete referent at all. We might have no idea why we are feeling anxious, but that doesn’t make anxiety less of a problem than fear, but rather infinitely more of a problem. Anxiety doesn’t go away when you remove yourself from the object you fear – anxiety just hangs around, eating away at your soul, and not providing you with any reason to explain its power.
There is so much more to this book, but I did need to finally get around to writing this review.
August 10, 2016
This is such a mixed bag, frustrating to read.
The first half develops the thought of psychopolitics, the new form of power under neoliberalism. This is an amazing part. It's deliberately named after Foucault's biopolitics, except that under neoliberalism, the threat of bodily harm is eliminated. We believe ourselves to be free, but under neoliberalism, force is put on everyone in a much more nefarious, hidden way - you think you want to optimize yourself, or to become a better version of yourself, but in reality the system just wants you to become a better worker.
Rough translation: The I as a project, that believes itself to be free of external and foreign pressures, now subjugates itself to inner pressures in form of pressure to perform and optimize.
From there it becomes apparent just why there is no organized resistance to it, no resistance that has any overarching theme (think of the splintered message of Occupy) - in these times, classes have disappeared, the modern knowledge worker is 'ein selbstausbeutender Arbeiter seines eigenen Unternehmens', a self-exploiting worker of his own company.
I've seen these types of behaviors especially in two communities - programmers and scientists. Both work through the weekend - both are obsessed with improvement, self-measurement - both have side-projects etc. Scientists are the original self-exploiters, we've never really had a structure to protest against. If scientists go on strike all they do is sabotage their own product (has anyone written anything on what sociologists of work can learn about work from scientists?). The new knowledge workers have the same problem - if you're a digital nomad who works on contract-basis you have no power to change the system, you're your own boss in the worst sense.
Neoliberalism has trained that into everyone, and subjugates people even more through forced transparency - everyone who participates in social networks feels the quick reaction of the entire network to anyone who deviates from the 'mainstream'. Expulsion of deviants isn't a new thing, but the quick and easy spread via social networks makes this effect extreme.
The second half goes off on a tangent about Big Data and suffers enormously from the fact that the author completely believes the hype about Big Data - it describes a philosophy of Big Data that feels just wrong. For example, he calls the rise of statistics during Rousseau's time the 'first enlightenment' and the rise of Big Data (here sometimes 'dataism') as a second enlightenment. This completely falls for the Big Data hype, since to me Big Data is just statistics + a ton of hype. There is no difference! You still use the same old methods, just on bigger datasets. You still have to make sense!
Or this one:
Rough translation: Dataism is nihilism. It completely dispenses with reason. Data and numbers are additive and not narrative. However, sense depends on narration. Data fills the emptiness of sense.
This ties into my above criticism - the goal of all Big Data algorithms is to extract sense from the data, there's no dispensing of reason, they rely on coming up with a story first and then checking it.
Let's look at an example. I have a large dataset of DNA from cabbage. I want to use publicly available data from prior studies to predict what some of the stuff in my DNA is doing, predict genes, etc. I run some fancy algorithms to search for the known sequences in my cabbage-set, and get about 100,000 genes. I start to look through the results, but some of them are hits for known genes involved in human eye color. How is that possible? Do I have blue-eyed cabbage? Of course not, my prior studies are just contaminated with human data. It's still up to me (and in some ways, the algorithm) to come up with a narrative, and to make sense from the stuff that we're actually seeing - that's the holy grail of all of big data! There is no 'data fills the emptiness', you can't rely on the data alone, no-one does. And that's what annoys me so much about the critique of Big Data here, it's critiquing a fantasy thing invented by coked-up MBAs for press releases in order to look stronger to make investors love them, not what Big Data actually is in reality.
Here's the worst sentence:
Rough translation: Quantified Self is being run with an almost libidinous energy. The dataism itself is starting to develop libidinous, pretty much pornographic attributes. Dataists copulate with data. Now people talk of 'data-sexuals'. They are supposed to be 'adamantly digital' and hold data to be 'sexy'. The digit is moving closer to the phallus.
¯\(°_o)/¯ Han studied philosophy in Germany and it shows.
After this short excursion into bizarro land we're actually getting back into interesting stuff - Han starts to develop (yet incomplete) thought on how a person can react to psychopolitics, how he or she could develop a free life.
It's a short book so the author doesn't go far, but hopefully a future book will.
The first half develops the thought of psychopolitics, the new form of power under neoliberalism. This is an amazing part. It's deliberately named after Foucault's biopolitics, except that under neoliberalism, the threat of bodily harm is eliminated. We believe ourselves to be free, but under neoliberalism, force is put on everyone in a much more nefarious, hidden way - you think you want to optimize yourself, or to become a better version of yourself, but in reality the system just wants you to become a better worker.
Das Ich als Projekt, das sich von äußeren Zwängen und Fremdzwängen befreit zu haben glaubt, unterwirft sich nun inneren Zwängen und Selbstzwängen in Form von Leistungs- und Optimierungszwang.
Rough translation: The I as a project, that believes itself to be free of external and foreign pressures, now subjugates itself to inner pressures in form of pressure to perform and optimize.
From there it becomes apparent just why there is no organized resistance to it, no resistance that has any overarching theme (think of the splintered message of Occupy) - in these times, classes have disappeared, the modern knowledge worker is 'ein selbstausbeutender Arbeiter seines eigenen Unternehmens', a self-exploiting worker of his own company.
I've seen these types of behaviors especially in two communities - programmers and scientists. Both work through the weekend - both are obsessed with improvement, self-measurement - both have side-projects etc. Scientists are the original self-exploiters, we've never really had a structure to protest against. If scientists go on strike all they do is sabotage their own product (has anyone written anything on what sociologists of work can learn about work from scientists?). The new knowledge workers have the same problem - if you're a digital nomad who works on contract-basis you have no power to change the system, you're your own boss in the worst sense.
Neoliberalism has trained that into everyone, and subjugates people even more through forced transparency - everyone who participates in social networks feels the quick reaction of the entire network to anyone who deviates from the 'mainstream'. Expulsion of deviants isn't a new thing, but the quick and easy spread via social networks makes this effect extreme.
The second half goes off on a tangent about Big Data and suffers enormously from the fact that the author completely believes the hype about Big Data - it describes a philosophy of Big Data that feels just wrong. For example, he calls the rise of statistics during Rousseau's time the 'first enlightenment' and the rise of Big Data (here sometimes 'dataism') as a second enlightenment. This completely falls for the Big Data hype, since to me Big Data is just statistics + a ton of hype. There is no difference! You still use the same old methods, just on bigger datasets. You still have to make sense!
Or this one:
Dataismus ist Nihilismus. Er verzichtet ganz auf Sinn. Daten und Zahlen sind additiv und nicht narrativ. Sinn beruht dagegen auf der Narration. Daten füllen die Sinnleere.
Rough translation: Dataism is nihilism. It completely dispenses with reason. Data and numbers are additive and not narrative. However, sense depends on narration. Data fills the emptiness of sense.
This ties into my above criticism - the goal of all Big Data algorithms is to extract sense from the data, there's no dispensing of reason, they rely on coming up with a story first and then checking it.
Let's look at an example. I have a large dataset of DNA from cabbage. I want to use publicly available data from prior studies to predict what some of the stuff in my DNA is doing, predict genes, etc. I run some fancy algorithms to search for the known sequences in my cabbage-set, and get about 100,000 genes. I start to look through the results, but some of them are hits for known genes involved in human eye color. How is that possible? Do I have blue-eyed cabbage? Of course not, my prior studies are just contaminated with human data. It's still up to me (and in some ways, the algorithm) to come up with a narrative, and to make sense from the stuff that we're actually seeing - that's the holy grail of all of big data! There is no 'data fills the emptiness', you can't rely on the data alone, no-one does. And that's what annoys me so much about the critique of Big Data here, it's critiquing a fantasy thing invented by coked-up MBAs for press releases in order to look stronger to make investors love them, not what Big Data actually is in reality.
Here's the worst sentence:
»Quantified Self« etwa wird geradezu mit einer libidinösen Energie betrieben. Der Dataismus entwickelt insgesamt libidinöse, ja pornographische Züge. Dataisten kopulieren mit Daten. So spricht man inzwischen auch von »Datasexuellen«. Sie seien »unerbittlich digital« und hielten Daten »für sexy«.[49] Der digitus nähert sich dem phallus.
Rough translation: Quantified Self is being run with an almost libidinous energy. The dataism itself is starting to develop libidinous, pretty much pornographic attributes. Dataists copulate with data. Now people talk of 'data-sexuals'. They are supposed to be 'adamantly digital' and hold data to be 'sexy'. The digit is moving closer to the phallus.
¯\(°_o)/¯ Han studied philosophy in Germany and it shows.
After this short excursion into bizarro land we're actually getting back into interesting stuff - Han starts to develop (yet incomplete) thought on how a person can react to psychopolitics, how he or she could develop a free life.
It's a short book so the author doesn't go far, but hopefully a future book will.
April 22, 2024
"The Panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The scheme of the design is to allow all (pan-) inmates of an institution to be observed (-opticon) by a single watchman without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched" (from the WIKIPEDIA)
(...YOU)
"Facebook is the global Church, Synagogue (literally the congregation) of the digital"
Byung-Chui Han
(Of course the Cambridge Analytica files were unknown to Byung by the time he wrote this book; nor any Congress hearings had happened. After last week’s 2-days hearings one can always wonder about some sham involved, as Facebook added a $24 billion to its market cap; though some compensations are due to those whose private data had been abused. Added 17th April 2018)
Thus far, very interesting, the concept of Psychopolitics. But I have some objections. Apparently, to Byung, the Orwell age, or paradigm, doesn't fit the ongoing age. He suggests we don't live under an Orwellian state, with big screens and a Ministry of Truth and torture chambers. Byung is far from the truth. The truth-of-the-matter is: we, in fact, live in the age of the Truth-search (or Lie-bashing; it goes either way). How about the 2016 US presidential campaign and the debate on "fake news"? We can always wonder, as some did, that "fake news" played a role in the election; still, some just don't agree. But, in France, Macron wanted to control the phenomenon; he had a project to control "fake news"; the immediate (political) objection would be: who would control it, and: "what are, really, fake news"?... to start with.
“Thousands of propaganda accounts on social networks are spreading all over the world, in all languages, lies invented to tarnish political officials, personalities, public figures, journalists,” Macron said, adding that “if we want to protect liberal democracies, we must have strong legislation.” *
To Byung, we live in the 'panopticon digital' age, of smarthphones, Google Glass, of "posting" and "tweeting". He doesn't mention that these activities are under close scrutiny by several security and intelligence agencies in the USA (check on the Senate hearings on Facebook, Google and Twitter, a apropos the supposed Russian influence on the 2016 election**). No, the Orwell state isn't away. That's my guess. There's certainly something to question about when Byung says "transparency and information replace truth".
Byung is too benevolent. His lines look naive. The New Technologies are too powerful to be left un-politicized. In fact, they are. Propaganda is not a thing of the past. Nor, media control.
"In the 'digital panopticon', the Big
Nevertheless, Byung-Chul is right: people expose themselves, by their own initiative, in some cases, too much.
The book, being a collection of essays, certainly has great ideas to explore. But it remains a very critical approach (tainted Marxist at times) of the digital era. Few references are made to the positive side of the digital. If carefully and responsibly used. After all, it's a "DIGITAL REVOLUTION".
P.S. Dear Sir Byung-Chul, I hope you will enjoy this piece of digital wonder "Der preis der Macht"
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P.P.S. Byung-Chul Han is a German author.
*https://www.theatlantic.com/internati...
**https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/us...
***http://bgr.com/2016/02/11/why-faceboo...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
https://www.fastcompany.com/40477441/...
https://www.rt.com/news/419033-belgiu...
UPDATE:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/op...
UPDATE:
https://time.com/5602363/george-orwel...
UPDATE
He's in Oporto, today, April 11th.
https://www.porto.pt/en/news/korean-p...
UPDATE
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/inf...
December 31, 2021
The moral of the story is this: by weaponising our excessive intelligence, Neoliberalism with its Ken-Doll-Big-Data keratin treatment smoothens us out into horizontal planes of papers where incessant communication abounds. It straightens us out and transforms us into transparency fetishising losers: making us both the master and the slave of our selves. We sell ourselves - the constantly optimised, live-laugh-love selves. Clearly, the epitome of the archetypal Neoliberal Achievement-Subject is the upper middle class, touchy-feely-poetry-loving, lit-fests-attending, getting-lost-in-the-swamps-of-self-improvement, and fairy-lights-using individuals. Everybody is a cool-kid today, and everybody is a basic bitch of that battalion.
A mind-numbing overabundance of boring, rotten self-expression has reduced us to a bundle of momentary affects. Words! Words! Words! Intelligence is of the system that produces it. Therefore, it has no access to the Outside. When there is non-stop networking and the immaterial modes of production are programming you with an exhausting will-to-become-transparent, shutting the fuck up and playing the fool is an act of resistance.
Also, will someone please, for the love of all that is good and pure, ask continental philosophers to come down to earth and place their books in the real world, at a specific place? tfw your book jerks off pure idealism only and you have the audacity to be shocked that more people aren't radicalised by just airy ideas.
ANYWAY, overall it is VERY stimulating and thought-provoking. READ!
3.5
A mind-numbing overabundance of boring, rotten self-expression has reduced us to a bundle of momentary affects. Words! Words! Words! Intelligence is of the system that produces it. Therefore, it has no access to the Outside. When there is non-stop networking and the immaterial modes of production are programming you with an exhausting will-to-become-transparent, shutting the fuck up and playing the fool is an act of resistance.
Also, will someone please, for the love of all that is good and pure, ask continental philosophers to come down to earth and place their books in the real world, at a specific place? tfw your book jerks off pure idealism only and you have the audacity to be shocked that more people aren't radicalised by just airy ideas.
ANYWAY, overall it is VERY stimulating and thought-provoking. READ!
3.5
April 17, 2018
Well, Big Data comes across as waay too villainized here. I believe that instruments, such as Big Data, should not be villainized, their masters should be. After all, no instrument works on its own, always there are some operators behinds the scenes.
Well, well, well... Data as the new sexy... I've always found it funny when I heard of 'sexy' professions. The author takes this feeling to a whole new level of wrong.
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed an intelligent, system for exploiting freedom. (c)
Q:
Initially, the internet was celebrated as a medium of boundless liberty. Microsoft’s early advertising slogan – ‘Where do you want to go today?’ – suggested unlimited freedom and mobility on the web. As it turned out, such euphoria was an illusion. Today, unbounded freedom and communication are switching over into total control and surveillance. More and more, social media resemble digital panoptica keeping watch over the social realm and exploiting it mercilessly. We had just freed ourselves from the disciplinary panopticon – then we threw ourselves into a new, and even more efficient, panopticon. (c)
Q:
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon isolated inmates from each other for disciplinary purposes and prevented them from interacting. In contrast, the occupants of today’s digital panopticon actively communicate with each other and willingly expose themselves. ...
Of our own free will, we put any and all conceivable information about ourselves on the internet, without having the slightest idea who knows what, when or on what occasion. This lack of control represents a crisis of freedom to be taken seriously. Indeed, given the data that people make available willy-nilly, the very idea of protecting privacy (Datenschutz) is becoming obsolete. (c)
Q:
Today, we are entering the age of digital psychopolitics. It means passing from passive surveillance to active steering. As such, it is precipitating a further crisis of freedom: now, free will itself is at stake. Big Data is a highly efficient psychopolitical instrument that makes it possible to achieve comprehensive knowledge of the dynamics of social communication. This knowledge is knowledge for the sake of domination and control (Herrschaftswissen): it facilitates intervention in the psyche and enables influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level. (c)
Q:
In order to heighten productivity, emotional capitalism also enlists playing and games – which should, in fact, be the Other of Work, its opposite. Emotional capitalism is gamifying the life- and working world. Playing games lends an emotional, indeed a dramatic, charge to working – which in turn generates more motivation. Because games rapidly deliver a sense of success and reward, the result is higher performance and a greater yield. A person playing a game, being emotionally invested, is much more engaged than a worker who acts rationally or is simply functioning. (c)
Q:
The gamification of work exploits homo ludens. The player subjugates him- or herself to the order of domination in the very act of playing. Today, the gamification logic of ‘Likes’, ‘Friends’ and ‘Followers’ means that social communication is also being plugged into and subordinated to a game mode. The corollary of the gamification of communication is its commercialization. That said, this process is destroying human communication. (c)
Q:
Dataism has taken the stage with the fervour of a second Enlightenment. During the first Enlightenment, statistics was thought to possess the capacity to liberate human knowledge from the clutches of mythology. ...
Now, transparency is the buzzword of the second Enlightenment. Data are supposed to be a pellucid medium. As Brooks describes them, data afford a ‘transparent and reliable lens’. The imperative of the second Enlightenment declares: everything must become data and information. The soul of the second Enlightenment is data totalitarianism, or data fetishism. Although it announces that it is taking leave of all ideology, dataism itself is an ideology. It is leading to digital totalitarianism. Therefore, a third Enlightenment is called for – in order to shine a light on how digital enlightenment has transformed into a new kind of servitude. (c)
Q:
Now, numbers and data are not just being absolutized – they are becoming sexualized and fetishized. This amounts to nothing other than libidinal energy flowing into today’s ‘Quantified Self’. On the whole, dataism is displaying libidinous – indeed, pornographic – traits. Dataists mate with their data. In the meanwhile, there is even talk of ‘datasexuals’. They are ‘relentlessly digital’ and consider data ‘sexy’. The digitus is starting to play the part of the phallus. (c)
Q:
Today, Big Data is not just taking the stage as Big Brother – it is also taking the form of Big Business. First and foremost, Big Data is a vast, commercial enterprise. Here, personal data are unceasingly monetized and commercialized. Now, people are treated and traded as packages of data for economic use. That is, human beings have become a commodity. Big Brother and Big Business have formed an alliance. The surveillance state and the market are merging.
Acxiom is a company trading in the personal data of about 300 million US citizens – in other words, practically all of them. By now, Acxiom knows more about Americans than the FBI. The company divides people into seventy categories. In the catalogue, they are offered up like goods for sale. For any need, there is something to buy. People with a low economic value are designated as ‘waste’ – that is, ‘trash’. Consumers with a higher market value are found in the group ‘Shooting Star’. From ages thirty-six to forty-five they are dynamic, get up early to go jogging, have no children but are married, like to travel, and watch Seinfeld. (c)
Well, well, well... Data as the new sexy... I've always found it funny when I heard of 'sexy' professions. The author takes this feeling to a whole new level of wrong.
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed an intelligent, system for exploiting freedom. (c)
Q:
Initially, the internet was celebrated as a medium of boundless liberty. Microsoft’s early advertising slogan – ‘Where do you want to go today?’ – suggested unlimited freedom and mobility on the web. As it turned out, such euphoria was an illusion. Today, unbounded freedom and communication are switching over into total control and surveillance. More and more, social media resemble digital panoptica keeping watch over the social realm and exploiting it mercilessly. We had just freed ourselves from the disciplinary panopticon – then we threw ourselves into a new, and even more efficient, panopticon. (c)
Q:
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon isolated inmates from each other for disciplinary purposes and prevented them from interacting. In contrast, the occupants of today’s digital panopticon actively communicate with each other and willingly expose themselves. ...
Of our own free will, we put any and all conceivable information about ourselves on the internet, without having the slightest idea who knows what, when or on what occasion. This lack of control represents a crisis of freedom to be taken seriously. Indeed, given the data that people make available willy-nilly, the very idea of protecting privacy (Datenschutz) is becoming obsolete. (c)
Q:
Today, we are entering the age of digital psychopolitics. It means passing from passive surveillance to active steering. As such, it is precipitating a further crisis of freedom: now, free will itself is at stake. Big Data is a highly efficient psychopolitical instrument that makes it possible to achieve comprehensive knowledge of the dynamics of social communication. This knowledge is knowledge for the sake of domination and control (Herrschaftswissen): it facilitates intervention in the psyche and enables influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level. (c)
Q:
In order to heighten productivity, emotional capitalism also enlists playing and games – which should, in fact, be the Other of Work, its opposite. Emotional capitalism is gamifying the life- and working world. Playing games lends an emotional, indeed a dramatic, charge to working – which in turn generates more motivation. Because games rapidly deliver a sense of success and reward, the result is higher performance and a greater yield. A person playing a game, being emotionally invested, is much more engaged than a worker who acts rationally or is simply functioning. (c)
Q:
The gamification of work exploits homo ludens. The player subjugates him- or herself to the order of domination in the very act of playing. Today, the gamification logic of ‘Likes’, ‘Friends’ and ‘Followers’ means that social communication is also being plugged into and subordinated to a game mode. The corollary of the gamification of communication is its commercialization. That said, this process is destroying human communication. (c)
Q:
Dataism has taken the stage with the fervour of a second Enlightenment. During the first Enlightenment, statistics was thought to possess the capacity to liberate human knowledge from the clutches of mythology. ...
Now, transparency is the buzzword of the second Enlightenment. Data are supposed to be a pellucid medium. As Brooks describes them, data afford a ‘transparent and reliable lens’. The imperative of the second Enlightenment declares: everything must become data and information. The soul of the second Enlightenment is data totalitarianism, or data fetishism. Although it announces that it is taking leave of all ideology, dataism itself is an ideology. It is leading to digital totalitarianism. Therefore, a third Enlightenment is called for – in order to shine a light on how digital enlightenment has transformed into a new kind of servitude. (c)
Q:
Now, numbers and data are not just being absolutized – they are becoming sexualized and fetishized. This amounts to nothing other than libidinal energy flowing into today’s ‘Quantified Self’. On the whole, dataism is displaying libidinous – indeed, pornographic – traits. Dataists mate with their data. In the meanwhile, there is even talk of ‘datasexuals’. They are ‘relentlessly digital’ and consider data ‘sexy’. The digitus is starting to play the part of the phallus. (c)
Q:
Today, Big Data is not just taking the stage as Big Brother – it is also taking the form of Big Business. First and foremost, Big Data is a vast, commercial enterprise. Here, personal data are unceasingly monetized and commercialized. Now, people are treated and traded as packages of data for economic use. That is, human beings have become a commodity. Big Brother and Big Business have formed an alliance. The surveillance state and the market are merging.
Acxiom is a company trading in the personal data of about 300 million US citizens – in other words, practically all of them. By now, Acxiom knows more about Americans than the FBI. The company divides people into seventy categories. In the catalogue, they are offered up like goods for sale. For any need, there is something to buy. People with a low economic value are designated as ‘waste’ – that is, ‘trash’. Consumers with a higher market value are found in the group ‘Shooting Star’. From ages thirty-six to forty-five they are dynamic, get up early to go jogging, have no children but are married, like to travel, and watch Seinfeld. (c)
May 15, 2025
In his 2017 book, Psychopolitics, philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han argues that digital platforms have ushered in a new era where mass manipulation is more comprehensive and invasive while paradoxically functioning less explicitly. It’s not just that desires are no longer “organic” but that their algorithmic generation within the framework of capitalist prerogatives signals something akin to the concept of singularity where psychic capital and its functional priorities become indistinguishable from the economic priorities that preside over them. Under the illusion of unprecedented freedom, individuals now see themselves as perpetual “projects,” constantly reinventing and optimizing their identities. This self-reinvention, Han contends, mirrors the logic of capital, transforming people into compliant agents of their own exploitation and collaborators in a deeper process of dehumanization.
Scholars have been studying the effects of mass advertising, post-industrial society, and globalization, (which are perhaps the three most prominent marks of the neoliberal project) on people for a LONG time, with the consensus being that the human psyche is highly manipulable and malleable, while its possessors are still convinced of their own psychological sovereignty. But anyone paying attention knows that within the last decade or so we have entered a new era of social and digital communications. This relies on the willful participation and transparency of individuals in a digitally remade panopticon, which differs from Bentham's original concept because rather than isolating inmates from each other and preventing them from interacting, the inhabitants of today's digital panopticon "actively communicate with each other and willingly expose themselves." This has allowed a different but much more frightening control society to emerge, one that utilizes freedom to make its occupants enthusiastic participants who readily engage in their own self-exposure. This relates back to the fact that humans have now begun to see themselves as "projects" and because of the curative nature of social media, they seek to curate their lives and personalities for their own affirmation and self-understanding, but also as objects of consumption for others (commodification of the self), not excluding big data. This reframes their own lived experience and way of being.
The most troubling thing is how so much of people's interiority is "offered out of an inner need," pointing to the deeply embedded psychological component of digital communications. Social media is no longer something we spend time (often inordinate amounts) doing, but rather it has merged with or even enveloped our own perceptions of reality, including our self-understanding, our values, roles, duties, and obligations. It justifies itself by making personal desires the preeminent aim of human life, one major aspect of what Han would all "the cult of positivity," where any and all repression appears as an encroachment on freedom (the ultimate neoliberal sin), rather than protective bulwarks that enable one to live a life of constancy and consistency, while maintaining a mediated personality capable of commitment, sincerity, loyalty, and true friendship. When discussing the knowledge captured by big data, Han says, "This knowledge is knowledge for the sake of domination and control; it facilitates intervention in the psyche and enables influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level."
He also claims that new objects are introduced into the social milieu that demand "devotion" which serve as stabilizing mechanism of the established dominion. So smartphones have become the new rosary because they demand submission while also acting as confessionals.
This, of course, bodes well for the dominant forms of power emanating from a fully formed neoliberal regime because it has achieved a power so remarkable in it scope, but even more impressively its subjects very willingly submit or give themselves over to these perpetually expanding and pernicious forces, mostly, and and this is the most important part, because power, as we understand it to be a dominant/submissive relationship, is no longer visible. So the once dominant framework of power has been masked. This new technology of power instead, "makes sure that people subordinate themselves to power relations on their own" rather than the historical methods of repression and inhibition. "It proves so effective because it does not operate by means of forbidding or depriving, but by pleasing and fulfilling. Instead of making people compliant, it seeks to make them dependent."
This leads Han to conclude that Foucault's concept of biopolitics is an insufficient theory to explain the new technologies of power, since the disciplinary power does focus its attention on 'the administration of bodies' and the 'calculated management of life' that yokes one into a 'system of norms,' yet the most exploitable realm of the neoliberal regime is the psychic one, and therefore the concept of biopolitics, which has no access to this particular region of the human person is an inadequate or incomplete explanation. According to Foucault's theory, "For capitalist society, it is biopolitics, the biological, the somatic, the corporal, that matters more than anything else." This isn't to say that Foucault's theory of biopolitics doesn't still serve as the core thesis of the postmodern world, rather Han says it doesn't reach far enough into the interiority of the human, it just plays itself out on the productive and behavioral capacities of the body, rather than fully invading the human soul.
Even Foucault's "technologies of self" which refers to the "intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves in their singular being, and to make their life an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria" has been captured by the neoliberal regime. And what was originally intended to stand in opposition to power and domination is now utterly subordinate to the parameters of the current technologies of power. So, rather than liberation, it too falls under the dominion of neoliberal conditioning, and it interprets this very sad attempt at distinction as freedom.
Because of the nature of capitalism, is constant mutations and expansiveness occur our of necessity, meaning that, like all systems or ideologies, it must conform to and abide by its own logic in order to survive and sustain itself - this means it necessarily functions in an invasive way and will seek to dominate every aspect of human life, transforming whatever it can into a productive force. "Now productivity is not to be enhanced by overcoming physical resistance so much as by optimizing psychic or mental processes." As one can expect, within the capitalist framework, this optimization translates into "impulsive creatures of consumption" and severs us from the technologies of true maturity, wisdom, and sovereignty, which is based within the medium of literacy. Reading and writing, according to Bernard Stiegler, is where true enlightenment and self-knowledge can occur.
This expansive psychic technology creates digital environments that bleed out into real life, so the convergence of the two is unmistakable. Also unmistakable is how the operative technique of online life takes on a characteristically emotional logic, ensuring our online personalities don't remain fragmented from our everyday, real, observable personalities. When we endeavor to do such a thing as conflate our digital lives with our real ones, then we know, taken as a whole, it must be charged with meaning, so we come to the digital realm bearing our emotional lives and all that entails, and inevitably this means online behavior prefigures what is to eventually become normalized human behavior in our day-to-day interactions, in the paradigm of our major perceptions, in the heuristic framework of our self-understanding, and in the dynamics of each of our relationships. This means the operative priorities of the online system will come to dominate human relationships - those priorities being the optimized functioning of the system, which means eliminating any obstacles that hinder the optimization and efficiency of the online system. In human terms, this means there would be a therapeutic approach to anything disruptive, since the human has been captured by neoliberal logic and since their own self-optimization has converged with the system itself, it must result in perpetual self-optimization and ultimately lend itself to the cult of positivity.
As a consequence, human relationships will be (have been?) dramatically altered. The online memeplex, the superficially demarcated lines of a bourgeoisie morality that dominate all discourse, the transformation of humor and irony and its capacity to once function safely within human relationships will be compressed and codified according to the dictates of the schizophrenic impulses of online culture. All conversations and human engagement will be diminished to the parameters of heavily mediated, highly observable online social discourse, meaning human relationships will lose their depth and authentic character, and where each human relationship possesses its own rhythms and cadences, its own nuances and history, it will now be overwhelmed by a uniform cultural template generated online and then mapped onto all social interaction.
This psychic takeover means the eradication of the authentic personality, suggesting that complexity, tension, depth, problematism, disagreeableness, texture - none of these will be granted any space to emerge within this environment because it is designed to work in the name of efficiency and performance, therefore all complexities and problematic dynamism that causes kinks or delays within the individual's psychic world will be therapeutically eliminated in much the same way that obstacles, economic or otherwise, are resolved so that capital can proceed at the most efficient and optimal pace. "It is leading to mental collapse, self-optimization, it turns out, amounts to total self-exploitation."
Scholars have been studying the effects of mass advertising, post-industrial society, and globalization, (which are perhaps the three most prominent marks of the neoliberal project) on people for a LONG time, with the consensus being that the human psyche is highly manipulable and malleable, while its possessors are still convinced of their own psychological sovereignty. But anyone paying attention knows that within the last decade or so we have entered a new era of social and digital communications. This relies on the willful participation and transparency of individuals in a digitally remade panopticon, which differs from Bentham's original concept because rather than isolating inmates from each other and preventing them from interacting, the inhabitants of today's digital panopticon "actively communicate with each other and willingly expose themselves." This has allowed a different but much more frightening control society to emerge, one that utilizes freedom to make its occupants enthusiastic participants who readily engage in their own self-exposure. This relates back to the fact that humans have now begun to see themselves as "projects" and because of the curative nature of social media, they seek to curate their lives and personalities for their own affirmation and self-understanding, but also as objects of consumption for others (commodification of the self), not excluding big data. This reframes their own lived experience and way of being.
The most troubling thing is how so much of people's interiority is "offered out of an inner need," pointing to the deeply embedded psychological component of digital communications. Social media is no longer something we spend time (often inordinate amounts) doing, but rather it has merged with or even enveloped our own perceptions of reality, including our self-understanding, our values, roles, duties, and obligations. It justifies itself by making personal desires the preeminent aim of human life, one major aspect of what Han would all "the cult of positivity," where any and all repression appears as an encroachment on freedom (the ultimate neoliberal sin), rather than protective bulwarks that enable one to live a life of constancy and consistency, while maintaining a mediated personality capable of commitment, sincerity, loyalty, and true friendship. When discussing the knowledge captured by big data, Han says, "This knowledge is knowledge for the sake of domination and control; it facilitates intervention in the psyche and enables influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level."
He also claims that new objects are introduced into the social milieu that demand "devotion" which serve as stabilizing mechanism of the established dominion. So smartphones have become the new rosary because they demand submission while also acting as confessionals.
This, of course, bodes well for the dominant forms of power emanating from a fully formed neoliberal regime because it has achieved a power so remarkable in it scope, but even more impressively its subjects very willingly submit or give themselves over to these perpetually expanding and pernicious forces, mostly, and and this is the most important part, because power, as we understand it to be a dominant/submissive relationship, is no longer visible. So the once dominant framework of power has been masked. This new technology of power instead, "makes sure that people subordinate themselves to power relations on their own" rather than the historical methods of repression and inhibition. "It proves so effective because it does not operate by means of forbidding or depriving, but by pleasing and fulfilling. Instead of making people compliant, it seeks to make them dependent."
This leads Han to conclude that Foucault's concept of biopolitics is an insufficient theory to explain the new technologies of power, since the disciplinary power does focus its attention on 'the administration of bodies' and the 'calculated management of life' that yokes one into a 'system of norms,' yet the most exploitable realm of the neoliberal regime is the psychic one, and therefore the concept of biopolitics, which has no access to this particular region of the human person is an inadequate or incomplete explanation. According to Foucault's theory, "For capitalist society, it is biopolitics, the biological, the somatic, the corporal, that matters more than anything else." This isn't to say that Foucault's theory of biopolitics doesn't still serve as the core thesis of the postmodern world, rather Han says it doesn't reach far enough into the interiority of the human, it just plays itself out on the productive and behavioral capacities of the body, rather than fully invading the human soul.
Even Foucault's "technologies of self" which refers to the "intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves in their singular being, and to make their life an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria" has been captured by the neoliberal regime. And what was originally intended to stand in opposition to power and domination is now utterly subordinate to the parameters of the current technologies of power. So, rather than liberation, it too falls under the dominion of neoliberal conditioning, and it interprets this very sad attempt at distinction as freedom.
Because of the nature of capitalism, is constant mutations and expansiveness occur our of necessity, meaning that, like all systems or ideologies, it must conform to and abide by its own logic in order to survive and sustain itself - this means it necessarily functions in an invasive way and will seek to dominate every aspect of human life, transforming whatever it can into a productive force. "Now productivity is not to be enhanced by overcoming physical resistance so much as by optimizing psychic or mental processes." As one can expect, within the capitalist framework, this optimization translates into "impulsive creatures of consumption" and severs us from the technologies of true maturity, wisdom, and sovereignty, which is based within the medium of literacy. Reading and writing, according to Bernard Stiegler, is where true enlightenment and self-knowledge can occur.
This expansive psychic technology creates digital environments that bleed out into real life, so the convergence of the two is unmistakable. Also unmistakable is how the operative technique of online life takes on a characteristically emotional logic, ensuring our online personalities don't remain fragmented from our everyday, real, observable personalities. When we endeavor to do such a thing as conflate our digital lives with our real ones, then we know, taken as a whole, it must be charged with meaning, so we come to the digital realm bearing our emotional lives and all that entails, and inevitably this means online behavior prefigures what is to eventually become normalized human behavior in our day-to-day interactions, in the paradigm of our major perceptions, in the heuristic framework of our self-understanding, and in the dynamics of each of our relationships. This means the operative priorities of the online system will come to dominate human relationships - those priorities being the optimized functioning of the system, which means eliminating any obstacles that hinder the optimization and efficiency of the online system. In human terms, this means there would be a therapeutic approach to anything disruptive, since the human has been captured by neoliberal logic and since their own self-optimization has converged with the system itself, it must result in perpetual self-optimization and ultimately lend itself to the cult of positivity.
As a consequence, human relationships will be (have been?) dramatically altered. The online memeplex, the superficially demarcated lines of a bourgeoisie morality that dominate all discourse, the transformation of humor and irony and its capacity to once function safely within human relationships will be compressed and codified according to the dictates of the schizophrenic impulses of online culture. All conversations and human engagement will be diminished to the parameters of heavily mediated, highly observable online social discourse, meaning human relationships will lose their depth and authentic character, and where each human relationship possesses its own rhythms and cadences, its own nuances and history, it will now be overwhelmed by a uniform cultural template generated online and then mapped onto all social interaction.
This psychic takeover means the eradication of the authentic personality, suggesting that complexity, tension, depth, problematism, disagreeableness, texture - none of these will be granted any space to emerge within this environment because it is designed to work in the name of efficiency and performance, therefore all complexities and problematic dynamism that causes kinks or delays within the individual's psychic world will be therapeutically eliminated in much the same way that obstacles, economic or otherwise, are resolved so that capital can proceed at the most efficient and optimal pace. "It is leading to mental collapse, self-optimization, it turns out, amounts to total self-exploitation."
January 31, 2025
Idiots of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your digital profile?
Thoughtful and succinct, this essay first advances a critique of Marxism from the left:
That is, “The Marxist scheme […] will prove to have been yet another illusion.”
Neoliberalism has forced us out of Foucault’s disciplinary society and its biopolitics. Rather, instead of compelling disclosure and enacting intrusive surveillance, digital society features seeming voluntary self-disclosure that requires no surveillance, a psychopolitics. The computer phone is its “rosary”: “The smartphone is not just an effective surveillance apparatus; it is also a mobile confessional.” This is not a matter of coercion, but rather “The neoliberal ideology of self-optimization displays religious – indeed, fanatical – traits.”
There’s definitely something to this line of critique, not against capital itself but the segment thereof termed ‘Big Data,’ but I’m not persuaded that one segment has superseded the entire system. The notion that neoliberalism represents something qualitatively different with an alleged absence of classes based on auto-exploitation (an incoherent construction) strikes me as somewhat silly. I get that it’s not an empirical observation, but the abstraction is at best premature. Classless society is not even emergent. There is further nothing new about independent contractor sole proprietors who do not employ wage laborers—that’s a pre-capitalist form of petit bourgeois organization that has persisted into capitalism proper—rebranding it as a new form just because some of its practitioners are no longer selling dry goods or performing light construction work for homeowners but instead take pictures of themselves on Instagram with the expectation of pay therefor isn’t very impressive, except that the social media influencers just seem to make the world a worse place in general. So maybe new capitalism gets dumber, but that’s merely a quantitative matter.
Anyway, there’s plenty going on in this short text. It’s generally smart and lively. Definitely of interest for left theory types.
Thoughtful and succinct, this essay first advances a critique of Marxism from the left:
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 Aufhebung. Capitalism can always escape into the future precisely because it harbours permanent and inherent contradiction.
That is, “The Marxist scheme […] will prove to have been yet another illusion.”
Neoliberalism has forced us out of Foucault’s disciplinary society and its biopolitics. Rather, instead of compelling disclosure and enacting intrusive surveillance, digital society features seeming voluntary self-disclosure that requires no surveillance, a psychopolitics. The computer phone is its “rosary”: “The smartphone is not just an effective surveillance apparatus; it is also a mobile confessional.” This is not a matter of coercion, but rather “The neoliberal ideology of self-optimization displays religious – indeed, fanatical – traits.”
There’s definitely something to this line of critique, not against capital itself but the segment thereof termed ‘Big Data,’ but I’m not persuaded that one segment has superseded the entire system. The notion that neoliberalism represents something qualitatively different with an alleged absence of classes based on auto-exploitation (an incoherent construction) strikes me as somewhat silly. I get that it’s not an empirical observation, but the abstraction is at best premature. Classless society is not even emergent. There is further nothing new about independent contractor sole proprietors who do not employ wage laborers—that’s a pre-capitalist form of petit bourgeois organization that has persisted into capitalism proper—rebranding it as a new form just because some of its practitioners are no longer selling dry goods or performing light construction work for homeowners but instead take pictures of themselves on Instagram with the expectation of pay therefor isn’t very impressive, except that the social media influencers just seem to make the world a worse place in general. So maybe new capitalism gets dumber, but that’s merely a quantitative matter.
Anyway, there’s plenty going on in this short text. It’s generally smart and lively. Definitely of interest for left theory types.
November 11, 2019
*“Like/ beğendim dijital ‘amin’dir.Like’ı tıklarken iktidar düzenine tabi kılarız kendimizi. Akıllı telefon sadece etkili bir gözetleme aracı değil, aynı zamanda taşınabilir bir günah çıkarma sandalyesidir. Facebook dijitalin kilisesi,sinagogudur.” (Sinagogun kelime anlamı ‘toplantıdır’)
.
Şeffaflık Toplumu'nda giderek saydamlaştığımızı, her anımızı- her isteğimizi bir sonraki günü düşünmeden paylaştığımızı söylemişti Byung Chul Han. Şeffalaştıkça kendimizi bir panoptikona (bkz: Jeremy Bentham'ın tasarladığı, izlenmese bile izlenildiği hissi veren hapishaneler ki modern yaşamın kendisi için de uygun bir karşılık olabilir) kapatıyoruz. İhtiyacımız haricindeki şeyleri de almak istiyoruz, hatta onlar için çalışıyoruz. Mükemmele ulaşmak için sayıyoruz. Günlük kalorilerimizi, kalp atışlarımızı, adımlarımızı, aldığımız beğenileri, sakinleşmek için aldığımız nefesleri. Çünkü bunu hedefliyorlar.
İnternette bir kitap baktığınızda onu sürekli önünüze getiriyorlar, onu alana kadar. Seçmemiz gereken kişileri işliyorlar bize, sevmemiz gerekenleri. Hatta sevmememiz gerekenleri de. Linç ediyoruz onları. Onlar ki tanımadığımız kişiler. Gidip görmediğimiz yerleri eleştiriyoruz.
Kapitalizm değil bu, dataizm dönemindeyiz, Big Data bizi izliyor, psikolojinin hedef alındığı ve özgürlüğün sömürüldüğü bir dönemdeyiz.
Kaçış yollarını sıralamıyor Byun Chul Han, var olan bir durumu açıklıyor- onunla yaşarken neleri gözden kaçırdığımızı vurguluyor satır aralarında.
.
Byung Chul Han okumak, her defasında beni rahatsız ediyor. Oldukça huzursuz da hissediyorum. Çünkü çıplak bırakıyor yazdıkları. İçinde bulunduğum zamanı, yakınımdakileri ve en çok da arzularımı sorgulatıyor.
Kelimelere takıntılı olmasını seviyorum, bir kelimenin kökeninden nerelere ulaştığını görmek beni şaşırtıyor. Üstten konuşmamasını da seviyorum.
Eros'un Istırabı'nın yayımlanmasını da dört gözle bekliyorum.
.
Detaylı ve açıklayıcı dipnotlarıyla Haluk Barışcan çevirisi ise çok başarılı -
.
Mustafa Horasan'ın kapak resmiyle-
.
Şeffaflık Toplumu'nda giderek saydamlaştığımızı, her anımızı- her isteğimizi bir sonraki günü düşünmeden paylaştığımızı söylemişti Byung Chul Han. Şeffalaştıkça kendimizi bir panoptikona (bkz: Jeremy Bentham'ın tasarladığı, izlenmese bile izlenildiği hissi veren hapishaneler ki modern yaşamın kendisi için de uygun bir karşılık olabilir) kapatıyoruz. İhtiyacımız haricindeki şeyleri de almak istiyoruz, hatta onlar için çalışıyoruz. Mükemmele ulaşmak için sayıyoruz. Günlük kalorilerimizi, kalp atışlarımızı, adımlarımızı, aldığımız beğenileri, sakinleşmek için aldığımız nefesleri. Çünkü bunu hedefliyorlar.
İnternette bir kitap baktığınızda onu sürekli önünüze getiriyorlar, onu alana kadar. Seçmemiz gereken kişileri işliyorlar bize, sevmemiz gerekenleri. Hatta sevmememiz gerekenleri de. Linç ediyoruz onları. Onlar ki tanımadığımız kişiler. Gidip görmediğimiz yerleri eleştiriyoruz.
Kapitalizm değil bu, dataizm dönemindeyiz, Big Data bizi izliyor, psikolojinin hedef alındığı ve özgürlüğün sömürüldüğü bir dönemdeyiz.
Kaçış yollarını sıralamıyor Byun Chul Han, var olan bir durumu açıklıyor- onunla yaşarken neleri gözden kaçırdığımızı vurguluyor satır aralarında.
.
Byung Chul Han okumak, her defasında beni rahatsız ediyor. Oldukça huzursuz da hissediyorum. Çünkü çıplak bırakıyor yazdıkları. İçinde bulunduğum zamanı, yakınımdakileri ve en çok da arzularımı sorgulatıyor.
Kelimelere takıntılı olmasını seviyorum, bir kelimenin kökeninden nerelere ulaştığını görmek beni şaşırtıyor. Üstten konuşmamasını da seviyorum.
Eros'un Istırabı'nın yayımlanmasını da dört gözle bekliyorum.
.
Detaylı ve açıklayıcı dipnotlarıyla Haluk Barışcan çevirisi ise çok başarılı -
.
Mustafa Horasan'ın kapak resmiyle-
Read
May 20, 2022If there's one thing I learned from this book it's that I shouldn't practice a transparency of self exemplified by providing free reviews of my thoughts on this work (or any work for that matter).
F*ck GR-Amazon for wanting to monetize my love of books and desire to discuss them.
F*ck GR-Amazon for wanting to monetize my love of books and desire to discuss them.
June 22, 2020
Intrusioni, insorgenze, tracciamenti
Byung-chul Han afferma che oggi stiamo vivendo una crisi di libertà. La società disciplinare sfruttava negativamente l'uomo per produrre beni di consumo, le forze produttive erano nuda vita al servizio del capitale, in un rapporto di dominio con il potere costituito. Oggi, invece, nella società neoliberale, la rivoluzione digitale, attraverso la trasparenza, ha reso ognuno di noi spettatore e consumatore, non più soggetto sottomesso, ma progetto vincolato alla persistente e continua ottimizzazione, al miglioramento, alla libera volontà integralmente positiva. Ciascuno impone a se stesso prestazioni e disciplina, per ottenere velocità, attivazione, motivazione. La libertà, come in un paradosso, si è rovesciata in costrizione. La lotta di classe si è trasformata in lotta interiore. Il potere intelligente del sistema algoritmico, dominando il sapere, ha accesso alla psiche e la influenza su un piano pre-riflessivo, preconscio. I big data agiscono silenziosamente, si offrono come benevolenza e permesso, influiscono per il piacere e la soddisfazione, evitando di cercare una docilità, ma passando direttamente alla dipendenza. Il potere del like ha natura affermativa e seduttiva, legge e interpreta i nostri pensieri, realizza nella comunità dei viventi una completa socializzazione immateriale. La biopolitica è stata sostituita dal paradigma della psicopolitica. L'inclusione nel sistema è compensato dalla perpetua sorveglianza, il controllo è attuato da obblighi e divieti che nella piena interconnessione legano la persona alla performance. La diversità, il segreto, l'estraneità sono ostacoli alla conversione dell'umano in informazione totale, e alle tecniche di misurazione e comparazione di ogni pratica, valore e criterio che vogliano sottrarsi al monopolio incondizionato del medium. L'individuo è imprenditore di sé stesso, portato a vivere la propria vita come un'opera d'arte, interpretando come libertà quello che in realtà è rapporto di dominio, illusione sfruttata come apparenza polarizzata, intimità presa per incremento del bisogno.”L'anima umana deve alla negatività la sua tensione più profonda; la negatività è ciò che mantiene viva la vita”. Secondo Byung-chul Han, è la benevolenza a rendere la sorveglianza efficace, il Grande Fratello viene introiettato da ciascuno di noi, mentre emozione e sentimento divengono conseguenza del processo economico. Byung-chul Han distingue la natura constativa del sentimento, e quella performativa dell'emozione; l'emozione è dinamica, situazionale, e queste qualità vengono sfruttate dal capitalismo, che orienta in questo modo gli individui, promuovendo le loro emozioni a mezzi di produzione. Una divinità imperscrutabile presiede alla logica di accumulazione tipica del social media. Byung-chul Han scrive che oggi non consumiamo più cose ma emozioni, le inclinazioni e le energie sensoriali vengono processate in un dispositivo che indica priorità e commercializza gli istinti. Richiamandosi al concetto di homo ludens, l'autore, formatosi a Berlino sulla filosofia tedesca, accorda al gioco una dimensione fondativa dell'essere, all'interno della quale la gratificazione degli amici e dei followers genera ricchezza e punteggio, e rende superfluo il lavoro come principio opposto al capitale. L'imperativo del mondo contemporaneo è: ”tutto deve diventare dato e informazione”; i big data hanno il dovere di svincolare il sapere dall'arbitrio soggettivo e dalla creatività dell'intuizione. Per questa via, i numeri parlano da soli. Desiderio, corporeità e immaginazione devono essere amichevolmente repressi. Ma, insegna Byung-chul Han, contare non è raccontare, il sé deriva da un racconto. Tuttavia, il self-tracking e le modalità di profilazione sono una microfisica del potere sul singolo e sulle masse, per poter ottimizzare i profitti e estrarre previsioni; nella condizione attuale, ogni clic e ogni ricerca vengono salvate, ogni passo in rete viene registrato e osservato. Questa, secondo Byung-chul Han, è la fine della libertà, i nostri bisogni sono sottratti alla coscienza, i big data rendono leggibili i nostri desideri. Il microprocessore è più veloce della volontà libera e le nostre microazioni vengono monetizzate e classificate secondo il loro valore. L'uomo è ridotto a pura merce. Quindi, esiste una strategia alternativa a questa epoca senza ragione? Secondo il filosofo sudcoreano, contrapporre all'addizione una narrazione, ricreare la possibilità di fermarsi, di fuggire dal punto zero dello spirito. ”Solo un indugiare contemplativo è capace di conclusione”. Un'occasione di futuro risiede nel diventare natura, dare luogo a un evento singolare e improbabile. Bisogna accedere a uno stato completamente nuovo, cercando nell'unicità l'inversione dell'uguale, lo spazio di libertà dove si parla un'altra lingua, chiamando in vita diverse costellazioni dell'essere, generando fratture nella certezza. L'uomo deve compiere molte svolte, rovesciare il dominio, lasciarsi andare all'esperienza della discontinuità. Se si vuole disarmare la psicopolitica, ci si deve strappare a se stessi e mettersi in gioco in un fuori dove ci siano annullamento e dissociazione, dove si incontra l'Altro da sé, una nuova forma di vita che non ha nome. Questa pratica, nella linea di Deleuze, è nota come ”idiotismo”: “fare l'idiota è sempre stata una funzione della filosofia”. L'idiota abita l'esterno che non può essere pensato in anticipo, e compie una scelta libera che apre a una coscienza eretica, a una politica del silenzio e della quiete (de-informarsi, dis-connettersi); nella quale l'intelligenza è una forma di selezione e trasmissione dal futuro: esperienza leggera, ricca e libera come quella dei bambini. Apertura alla luce, immensità del tempo vuoto, interpretazione imprevedibile.
Byung-chul Han afferma che oggi stiamo vivendo una crisi di libertà. La società disciplinare sfruttava negativamente l'uomo per produrre beni di consumo, le forze produttive erano nuda vita al servizio del capitale, in un rapporto di dominio con il potere costituito. Oggi, invece, nella società neoliberale, la rivoluzione digitale, attraverso la trasparenza, ha reso ognuno di noi spettatore e consumatore, non più soggetto sottomesso, ma progetto vincolato alla persistente e continua ottimizzazione, al miglioramento, alla libera volontà integralmente positiva. Ciascuno impone a se stesso prestazioni e disciplina, per ottenere velocità, attivazione, motivazione. La libertà, come in un paradosso, si è rovesciata in costrizione. La lotta di classe si è trasformata in lotta interiore. Il potere intelligente del sistema algoritmico, dominando il sapere, ha accesso alla psiche e la influenza su un piano pre-riflessivo, preconscio. I big data agiscono silenziosamente, si offrono come benevolenza e permesso, influiscono per il piacere e la soddisfazione, evitando di cercare una docilità, ma passando direttamente alla dipendenza. Il potere del like ha natura affermativa e seduttiva, legge e interpreta i nostri pensieri, realizza nella comunità dei viventi una completa socializzazione immateriale. La biopolitica è stata sostituita dal paradigma della psicopolitica. L'inclusione nel sistema è compensato dalla perpetua sorveglianza, il controllo è attuato da obblighi e divieti che nella piena interconnessione legano la persona alla performance. La diversità, il segreto, l'estraneità sono ostacoli alla conversione dell'umano in informazione totale, e alle tecniche di misurazione e comparazione di ogni pratica, valore e criterio che vogliano sottrarsi al monopolio incondizionato del medium. L'individuo è imprenditore di sé stesso, portato a vivere la propria vita come un'opera d'arte, interpretando come libertà quello che in realtà è rapporto di dominio, illusione sfruttata come apparenza polarizzata, intimità presa per incremento del bisogno.”L'anima umana deve alla negatività la sua tensione più profonda; la negatività è ciò che mantiene viva la vita”. Secondo Byung-chul Han, è la benevolenza a rendere la sorveglianza efficace, il Grande Fratello viene introiettato da ciascuno di noi, mentre emozione e sentimento divengono conseguenza del processo economico. Byung-chul Han distingue la natura constativa del sentimento, e quella performativa dell'emozione; l'emozione è dinamica, situazionale, e queste qualità vengono sfruttate dal capitalismo, che orienta in questo modo gli individui, promuovendo le loro emozioni a mezzi di produzione. Una divinità imperscrutabile presiede alla logica di accumulazione tipica del social media. Byung-chul Han scrive che oggi non consumiamo più cose ma emozioni, le inclinazioni e le energie sensoriali vengono processate in un dispositivo che indica priorità e commercializza gli istinti. Richiamandosi al concetto di homo ludens, l'autore, formatosi a Berlino sulla filosofia tedesca, accorda al gioco una dimensione fondativa dell'essere, all'interno della quale la gratificazione degli amici e dei followers genera ricchezza e punteggio, e rende superfluo il lavoro come principio opposto al capitale. L'imperativo del mondo contemporaneo è: ”tutto deve diventare dato e informazione”; i big data hanno il dovere di svincolare il sapere dall'arbitrio soggettivo e dalla creatività dell'intuizione. Per questa via, i numeri parlano da soli. Desiderio, corporeità e immaginazione devono essere amichevolmente repressi. Ma, insegna Byung-chul Han, contare non è raccontare, il sé deriva da un racconto. Tuttavia, il self-tracking e le modalità di profilazione sono una microfisica del potere sul singolo e sulle masse, per poter ottimizzare i profitti e estrarre previsioni; nella condizione attuale, ogni clic e ogni ricerca vengono salvate, ogni passo in rete viene registrato e osservato. Questa, secondo Byung-chul Han, è la fine della libertà, i nostri bisogni sono sottratti alla coscienza, i big data rendono leggibili i nostri desideri. Il microprocessore è più veloce della volontà libera e le nostre microazioni vengono monetizzate e classificate secondo il loro valore. L'uomo è ridotto a pura merce. Quindi, esiste una strategia alternativa a questa epoca senza ragione? Secondo il filosofo sudcoreano, contrapporre all'addizione una narrazione, ricreare la possibilità di fermarsi, di fuggire dal punto zero dello spirito. ”Solo un indugiare contemplativo è capace di conclusione”. Un'occasione di futuro risiede nel diventare natura, dare luogo a un evento singolare e improbabile. Bisogna accedere a uno stato completamente nuovo, cercando nell'unicità l'inversione dell'uguale, lo spazio di libertà dove si parla un'altra lingua, chiamando in vita diverse costellazioni dell'essere, generando fratture nella certezza. L'uomo deve compiere molte svolte, rovesciare il dominio, lasciarsi andare all'esperienza della discontinuità. Se si vuole disarmare la psicopolitica, ci si deve strappare a se stessi e mettersi in gioco in un fuori dove ci siano annullamento e dissociazione, dove si incontra l'Altro da sé, una nuova forma di vita che non ha nome. Questa pratica, nella linea di Deleuze, è nota come ”idiotismo”: “fare l'idiota è sempre stata una funzione della filosofia”. L'idiota abita l'esterno che non può essere pensato in anticipo, e compie una scelta libera che apre a una coscienza eretica, a una politica del silenzio e della quiete (de-informarsi, dis-connettersi); nella quale l'intelligenza è una forma di selezione e trasmissione dal futuro: esperienza leggera, ricca e libera come quella dei bambini. Apertura alla luce, immensità del tempo vuoto, interpretazione imprevedibile.
May 5, 2025
Jargon and ambiguity are not honest intellectualism
Okay, I’ve got an ax to grind about this book and it’s going to get annoying for everyone. But first with the good:
The concept of a neoliberal panopticon in which, in contrast with coercive systems as described in 1984, we willingly participate is accurate and also quite obvious. Neoliberalism is better described by the decadence of Brave New World. This point, which the author makes over and over again is banal at this point especially when you read in this thread often. The author explores Foucault’s concept of biopolitics in which governments attempt to control the bodies of its people. The author argues that this has transformed into psychopolitics in which we are ensnared in a prison of our minds more than the body wherein our data is used to predict and mold our behaviors. To this point the author says something like “The smartphone has become the new torture chamber.” The utter false equivalency aside from comparing bodily torture to smart phone capital surveillance, I’d like to explore what is is about this book that bothers me so much.
This author obscures much of what he says behind jargon and ambiguity. He’s trying to substitute profundity with vagueness. This is deliberate. Here’s what I mean: there are many concepts in this work that are obscure and generalized (like the data sex stuff? or dictatorship of emotions?) unless perhaps you are an initiated into Hegelian school of thought which is the underpinning of this entire book. The problem with the mentality of books like this is that you are either an acolyte or a western propagandist, there is no in between and there is no room for dissent. The author hides much of what he says behind jargon and if you call it out you “just didn’t understand the text.” I run into this conceit constantly with the ethos of this writer and many like him. There is a certain disingenuity in quoting 1984 as a critique of neoliberalism while completely ignoring the deliberate critique of Stalinism found in 1984. There is selective recall when focusing on the body and mental panopticon of neoliberalism regimes while ignoring the relatively same strategy of communist regimes. The apologetics are in the omission.
The problem I find with this is that a lot of the conclusions of this book are pretty obvious to anyone who gives a single critical thought to neoliberalism. Someone with no clue of any of these concepts knows there is something wrong with the system when corporations get bailouts and debt forgiveness and citizens are laden with debt, work paycheck to paycheck, have no family support and live within contaminated environments. You don’t need to “engage with dialectics” to understand the glaring flaws of neoliberalism. Marxists do not have a monopoly over capitalist critiques.
Books like this have no solutions, only cynicism and doom scrolling. I’ve realized I’ve brought a lot of my own baggage into this review and perhaps that is unfair to this book. However, I have no doubt with this author that if I were to push back on his ideas or possible hypocrisies I’d be deemed a western propagandist and dismissed with that thought terminating cliché.
Okay, I’ve got an ax to grind about this book and it’s going to get annoying for everyone. But first with the good:
The concept of a neoliberal panopticon in which, in contrast with coercive systems as described in 1984, we willingly participate is accurate and also quite obvious. Neoliberalism is better described by the decadence of Brave New World. This point, which the author makes over and over again is banal at this point especially when you read in this thread often. The author explores Foucault’s concept of biopolitics in which governments attempt to control the bodies of its people. The author argues that this has transformed into psychopolitics in which we are ensnared in a prison of our minds more than the body wherein our data is used to predict and mold our behaviors. To this point the author says something like “The smartphone has become the new torture chamber.” The utter false equivalency aside from comparing bodily torture to smart phone capital surveillance, I’d like to explore what is is about this book that bothers me so much.
This author obscures much of what he says behind jargon and ambiguity. He’s trying to substitute profundity with vagueness. This is deliberate. Here’s what I mean: there are many concepts in this work that are obscure and generalized (like the data sex stuff? or dictatorship of emotions?) unless perhaps you are an initiated into Hegelian school of thought which is the underpinning of this entire book. The problem with the mentality of books like this is that you are either an acolyte or a western propagandist, there is no in between and there is no room for dissent. The author hides much of what he says behind jargon and if you call it out you “just didn’t understand the text.” I run into this conceit constantly with the ethos of this writer and many like him. There is a certain disingenuity in quoting 1984 as a critique of neoliberalism while completely ignoring the deliberate critique of Stalinism found in 1984. There is selective recall when focusing on the body and mental panopticon of neoliberalism regimes while ignoring the relatively same strategy of communist regimes. The apologetics are in the omission.
The problem I find with this is that a lot of the conclusions of this book are pretty obvious to anyone who gives a single critical thought to neoliberalism. Someone with no clue of any of these concepts knows there is something wrong with the system when corporations get bailouts and debt forgiveness and citizens are laden with debt, work paycheck to paycheck, have no family support and live within contaminated environments. You don’t need to “engage with dialectics” to understand the glaring flaws of neoliberalism. Marxists do not have a monopoly over capitalist critiques.
Books like this have no solutions, only cynicism and doom scrolling. I’ve realized I’ve brought a lot of my own baggage into this review and perhaps that is unfair to this book. However, I have no doubt with this author that if I were to push back on his ideas or possible hypocrisies I’d be deemed a western propagandist and dismissed with that thought terminating cliché.
October 19, 2020
- ببین احاطه کرده است عدد فکر خلق را
در عصر روانسیاست، بیشتر از هر زمان دیگه همه چیز کمّیسازی میشه و تنها اعداد هستند که معتبرند نه روایات؛ بنابراین سوژهها در این عصر تنها به اعداد و ارقام تکیه میکنند، از آمار تلفات و مبتلایان به کرونا تا آمار حزبهای انتخابات آمریکا در هر ایالت و یا عدد قند خون.
«کمّیسازی همه چیز» یعنی چه؟ یعنی این که برادر بزرگ به اجبار بر در و دیوار تلهاسکرین نصب نمیکنه بلکه تلهاسکرین در جیب ما قرار داره و به جای اینکه اون ما رو زیر نظر بگیره و اعتراف بخواد، خود ما با کمال میل اسرارمون رو بهش تقدیم میکنیم و این اسرار به صورت آمارهایی درمیاد.
این مجموعه از اطلاعاتی که تکتک ما با کارهامون ثبت میکنیم به چه دردی میخوره؟ ما با این کار در تشکیل یک «کلانداده» شرکت میکنیم که این کلانداده برای انقیاد خود ما مورد استفاده قرار میگیره.
شرکتهایی با استفاده از کلانداده جمعیت رو دستهبندی میکنن و افراد رو در گروههایی قرار میدن (از افراد کمارزش که مصرف کمتری میکنن تا افراد باارزش) و در نهایت در عرضه و تبلیغ یک محصول جامعهی هدف رو نشونه میگیرن.
این همون چیزیه که نویسنده ازش به عنوان بحران آزادی در عصر روانسیاست یاد میکنه و عملاً این امر رو پایانِ آزادی میدونه چون در این صورت تصمیمات در سطح پیشاتأملی گرفته میشن ( لیمبیک ). برای همینه که تا اینحد راجع به احساسات و عواطف بحث میشه و مدام از ما خواسته میشه کاری کنیم که بهمون حس خوب میده. ما دیگه زندانیِ برادر بزرگ نیستیم بلکه زندانیِ خودمون هستیم که باید حس خوب داشته باشیم وگرنه محکومیم.
حالا محصولی که با استفاده از کلانداده ارائه میشه میتونه از شامپو باشه تا کاندید ریاست جمهوری. (پس عملاً میتونه پایانی هم بر سیاست باشه.) (این موضوع در مستند Active Measures فارغ از جهتگیریش خیلی خوب نشوندادهشد.)
-این قرار عاشقانه را عدد بده، شور و حال عارفانه را عدد بده...
پ.ن : کتاب «تاریخ مختصر نئولیبرالیسم» از دیوید هاروی هم برای فهم وضعیت بسیار مفیده.
در عصر روانسیاست، بیشتر از هر زمان دیگه همه چیز کمّیسازی میشه و تنها اعداد هستند که معتبرند نه روایات؛ بنابراین سوژهها در این عصر تنها به اعداد و ارقام تکیه میکنند، از آمار تلفات و مبتلایان به کرونا تا آمار حزبهای انتخابات آمریکا در هر ایالت و یا عدد قند خون.
«کمّیسازی همه چیز» یعنی چه؟ یعنی این که برادر بزرگ به اجبار بر در و دیوار تلهاسکرین نصب نمیکنه بلکه تلهاسکرین در جیب ما قرار داره و به جای اینکه اون ما رو زیر نظر بگیره و اعتراف بخواد، خود ما با کمال میل اسرارمون رو بهش تقدیم میکنیم و این اسرار به صورت آمارهایی درمیاد.
این مجموعه از اطلاعاتی که تکتک ما با کارهامون ثبت میکنیم به چه دردی میخوره؟ ما با این کار در تشکیل یک «کلانداده» شرکت میکنیم که این کلانداده برای انقیاد خود ما مورد استفاده قرار میگیره.
شرکتهایی با استفاده از کلانداده جمعیت رو دستهبندی میکنن و افراد رو در گروههایی قرار میدن (از افراد کمارزش که مصرف کمتری میکنن تا افراد باارزش) و در نهایت در عرضه و تبلیغ یک محصول جامعهی هدف رو نشونه میگیرن.
این همون چیزیه که نویسنده ازش به عنوان بحران آزادی در عصر روانسیاست یاد میکنه و عملاً این امر رو پایانِ آزادی میدونه چون در این صورت تصمیمات در سطح پیشاتأملی گرفته میشن ( لیمبیک ). برای همینه که تا اینحد راجع به احساسات و عواطف بحث میشه و مدام از ما خواسته میشه کاری کنیم که بهمون حس خوب میده. ما دیگه زندانیِ برادر بزرگ نیستیم بلکه زندانیِ خودمون هستیم که باید حس خوب داشته باشیم وگرنه محکومیم.
حالا محصولی که با استفاده از کلانداده ارائه میشه میتونه از شامپو باشه تا کاندید ریاست جمهوری. (پس عملاً میتونه پایانی هم بر سیاست باشه.) (این موضوع در مستند Active Measures فارغ از جهتگیریش خیلی خوب نشوندادهشد.)
-این قرار عاشقانه را عدد بده، شور و حال عارفانه را عدد بده...
پ.ن : کتاب «تاریخ مختصر نئولیبرالیسم» از دیوید هاروی هم برای فهم وضعیت بسیار مفیده.
April 24, 2024
idiota imbécil
August 3, 2020
Byung-Chul Han, neoliberalizmi şöyle tanımlıyor:
"Neoliberal rejimin iktidar tekniği, yasakçı, korumacı ya da baskıcı değil, ileriye dönük, müsamahakâr ve destekleyicidir.
Tüketim ve iletişim bastırılmaz, aksine en yüksek noktaya getirilir. Darlık değil olumlulukta bir bolluk, hatta aşırılık söz konusudur.
İhtiyaçlar bastırılmaz, teşvik edilir. İşkenceyle elde edilen itirafların yerini gönüllü kendini sergileme alır. İşkence odasının yerine akıllı telefon geçer.
Kişinin kendini gözetlediği Akıllı Telefon kutsal nesne, Facebook dijital tapınak, Like ise Amin'dir."
"Akıl, nesnellik, genellik, istikrar, süreklilik, sabitlik, kurallılık gerektirir; duygu değil duygulanım ve heyecan ise geçici ve anlıktır" diyor ve ekliyor:
Akıl yerine duygulanıma/heyecana yönelmek, limbik sistemi etkileyen tüketimi ve kişileri tüm benliğiyle performans sisteminin içine katarak gerçekleşen kendini sömürmeye kadar varan öz-sömürüyü pompalayarak, neoliberalizmin temel dayanağını oluşturur.
Neoliberal psikopolitika giderek daha incelikli sömürü biçimleri icat ediyor. Çok sayıda kendini yönetme atölyeleri, motivasyon artırıcı haftasonları, yaşam koçları, kişilik geliştirme seminerleri ve zihin antrenmanları kendini optimize etme ve verimliliği artırma konusunda sınır olmadığı vaadini dile getiriyor. Bunlar yalnızca çalışma saatlerini değil, bireyin tümünü, bütün dikkatini, hatta bizzat hayatını sömürme amaçlı neoliberal tahakküm teknikleri tarafından yönlendirilmektedir. Bu teknikler insanı keşfeder ve bizzat onu sömürünün nesnesi yapar.
Kendini optimize etmeyi talep eden neoliberal buyruk sadece sistem içerisinde kusursuz iş görmenin hizmetindedir. Verimlilik ve performansı artırmak için tıkanmalar, zayıflıklar ve hatalar tedaviyle giderilmelidir. Bu amaçla herşey ölçülebilir ve karşılaştırılabilir hale getirilerek pazarın mantığına teslim edilir. İyi bir hayat tasası değildir kendini optimize etme çabasının ardındaki. Bizzat sistemik zorlamalar, ölçülebilir pazar başarısıdır bunu zorunlu kılan.
Yurttaştan edilgin tüketiciye dönüştürülmüş olan insanın, etkin siyaset yerine homurdanarak, şikayet ederek tepki vermekte olduğunu, siyasetçilerin de seçmeni (tüketiciyi) tatmin eden tedarikçiler durumuna geldiğini söylüyor.
Dataizm'in günün nihilist felsefesi olduğunu, anlamdan vazgeçtiğini, aynılaştırdığını ve verilerden farklı/özel olana tahammülsüz olduğunu, dataistlerin verilerle çiftleştiğini, digitus'un giderek fallus olduğunu, Big Data veri toplama sistemi ile herkesin Big Brother'den çok öte izlendiğini, Data-Mining ile insanların biyolojik ve psikolojik verilerinin ayrıntısıyla öğrenilerek insanların seçimlerinin yönlendirebildiğini (PSİKOPOLİTİKA) anlatıyor ve Veri Diktatörlüğü'nde yaşadığımıza; data'nın anlam, anlatı, kavram ve teoriyle alakasızlığına, ruhsuzluğuna dikkat çekiyor.
Marx'ın, sınıflar (kalmamıştır), emek/sermaye çelişkisi(birbirinin tamamlayıcısıdırlar) ve emeğin üstünlüğü (emekten kurtuluş gerekir) tezlerine karşı çıkıyor ve şunları yazıyor:
"Kendini performansla sömüren, öz-üretim, öz-sömürü yapan bireyler, BİZ olamaz.
Bireyin öne çıkarıldığı zihniyet sistemin en önemli desteklerinden biridir ve bireysel özgürlük (toplumsal değil), sermayenin özgürlüğüdür.
Bilişim teknolojilerinin yaygınlaşmasıyla işçi profilinde yaşanan -maviden beyaza doğru- değişim, işçinin performans girişimcisi olması, medya üzerinden pompalanan tüketim kültürünün yarattığı refah yanılsaması sınıf bilincini tam da Herbert Marcuse’un "patronun kızıyla aynı marka ruju kullanan sekreter kız" saptamasıyla işaret ettiği şekilde görünmezleştirmeye başlamıştır".
Üretim biçimi olmayan bir hayat biçimini, hatta tamamen üretkenlik dışı bir hayatı, kullanılmazı kullanmayı becerebilecek durumda olmayı hedeflemeye çağırıyor.
Zekâ, kökeninde "arasından seçmek" fiilinden türemiştir; seçmeyin sunulanları, sistemi işleten veri olursunuz; bilinçli budala olun diyor.
Olay, öngörülemez olandır, yeni olanı başlatır ve kurar, ötekine kapıyı açar diyerek dönüştürücü eyleme vurgu yapıyor.
1.Aydınlanma dönemine akıl ve istatistiğin egemen olduğunu ve akıl için muhayyile, beden ve arzunun baskılandığını, 2.Aydınlanma dönemi yani bugünün ise anlamdan yoksun, anlatı içermeyen Veri Diktatörlüğü olduğunu söyleyen Han, bunları aşmak için 3.Aydınlanma'ya ihtiyaç olduğuna işaret ederek, mealen şunları öneriyor:
-Anlamdan yoksun, kolay ve geçiciler yerine anlamı/anlatısı olan, çaba/zaman gerektiren ve kalıcılık içeren uğraşlarımız olmalı
-Dijital dünyada az görünmeliyiz
-Sistemden az yararlanmalı ve mümkün olduğunca veri olmaktan uzak durmalıyız
-Sistemden az yararlanan insanlarla organik iletişim kurmalıyız
-"Olay"(yeniyi kuran, dönüştüren) varsa içinde olmalıyız.
"Neoliberal rejimin iktidar tekniği, yasakçı, korumacı ya da baskıcı değil, ileriye dönük, müsamahakâr ve destekleyicidir.
Tüketim ve iletişim bastırılmaz, aksine en yüksek noktaya getirilir. Darlık değil olumlulukta bir bolluk, hatta aşırılık söz konusudur.
İhtiyaçlar bastırılmaz, teşvik edilir. İşkenceyle elde edilen itirafların yerini gönüllü kendini sergileme alır. İşkence odasının yerine akıllı telefon geçer.
Kişinin kendini gözetlediği Akıllı Telefon kutsal nesne, Facebook dijital tapınak, Like ise Amin'dir."
"Akıl, nesnellik, genellik, istikrar, süreklilik, sabitlik, kurallılık gerektirir; duygu değil duygulanım ve heyecan ise geçici ve anlıktır" diyor ve ekliyor:
Akıl yerine duygulanıma/heyecana yönelmek, limbik sistemi etkileyen tüketimi ve kişileri tüm benliğiyle performans sisteminin içine katarak gerçekleşen kendini sömürmeye kadar varan öz-sömürüyü pompalayarak, neoliberalizmin temel dayanağını oluşturur.
Neoliberal psikopolitika giderek daha incelikli sömürü biçimleri icat ediyor. Çok sayıda kendini yönetme atölyeleri, motivasyon artırıcı haftasonları, yaşam koçları, kişilik geliştirme seminerleri ve zihin antrenmanları kendini optimize etme ve verimliliği artırma konusunda sınır olmadığı vaadini dile getiriyor. Bunlar yalnızca çalışma saatlerini değil, bireyin tümünü, bütün dikkatini, hatta bizzat hayatını sömürme amaçlı neoliberal tahakküm teknikleri tarafından yönlendirilmektedir. Bu teknikler insanı keşfeder ve bizzat onu sömürünün nesnesi yapar.
Kendini optimize etmeyi talep eden neoliberal buyruk sadece sistem içerisinde kusursuz iş görmenin hizmetindedir. Verimlilik ve performansı artırmak için tıkanmalar, zayıflıklar ve hatalar tedaviyle giderilmelidir. Bu amaçla herşey ölçülebilir ve karşılaştırılabilir hale getirilerek pazarın mantığına teslim edilir. İyi bir hayat tasası değildir kendini optimize etme çabasının ardındaki. Bizzat sistemik zorlamalar, ölçülebilir pazar başarısıdır bunu zorunlu kılan.
Yurttaştan edilgin tüketiciye dönüştürülmüş olan insanın, etkin siyaset yerine homurdanarak, şikayet ederek tepki vermekte olduğunu, siyasetçilerin de seçmeni (tüketiciyi) tatmin eden tedarikçiler durumuna geldiğini söylüyor.
Dataizm'in günün nihilist felsefesi olduğunu, anlamdan vazgeçtiğini, aynılaştırdığını ve verilerden farklı/özel olana tahammülsüz olduğunu, dataistlerin verilerle çiftleştiğini, digitus'un giderek fallus olduğunu, Big Data veri toplama sistemi ile herkesin Big Brother'den çok öte izlendiğini, Data-Mining ile insanların biyolojik ve psikolojik verilerinin ayrıntısıyla öğrenilerek insanların seçimlerinin yönlendirebildiğini (PSİKOPOLİTİKA) anlatıyor ve Veri Diktatörlüğü'nde yaşadığımıza; data'nın anlam, anlatı, kavram ve teoriyle alakasızlığına, ruhsuzluğuna dikkat çekiyor.
Marx'ın, sınıflar (kalmamıştır), emek/sermaye çelişkisi(birbirinin tamamlayıcısıdırlar) ve emeğin üstünlüğü (emekten kurtuluş gerekir) tezlerine karşı çıkıyor ve şunları yazıyor:
"Kendini performansla sömüren, öz-üretim, öz-sömürü yapan bireyler, BİZ olamaz.
Bireyin öne çıkarıldığı zihniyet sistemin en önemli desteklerinden biridir ve bireysel özgürlük (toplumsal değil), sermayenin özgürlüğüdür.
Bilişim teknolojilerinin yaygınlaşmasıyla işçi profilinde yaşanan -maviden beyaza doğru- değişim, işçinin performans girişimcisi olması, medya üzerinden pompalanan tüketim kültürünün yarattığı refah yanılsaması sınıf bilincini tam da Herbert Marcuse’un "patronun kızıyla aynı marka ruju kullanan sekreter kız" saptamasıyla işaret ettiği şekilde görünmezleştirmeye başlamıştır".
Üretim biçimi olmayan bir hayat biçimini, hatta tamamen üretkenlik dışı bir hayatı, kullanılmazı kullanmayı becerebilecek durumda olmayı hedeflemeye çağırıyor.
Zekâ, kökeninde "arasından seçmek" fiilinden türemiştir; seçmeyin sunulanları, sistemi işleten veri olursunuz; bilinçli budala olun diyor.
Olay, öngörülemez olandır, yeni olanı başlatır ve kurar, ötekine kapıyı açar diyerek dönüştürücü eyleme vurgu yapıyor.
1.Aydınlanma dönemine akıl ve istatistiğin egemen olduğunu ve akıl için muhayyile, beden ve arzunun baskılandığını, 2.Aydınlanma dönemi yani bugünün ise anlamdan yoksun, anlatı içermeyen Veri Diktatörlüğü olduğunu söyleyen Han, bunları aşmak için 3.Aydınlanma'ya ihtiyaç olduğuna işaret ederek, mealen şunları öneriyor:
-Anlamdan yoksun, kolay ve geçiciler yerine anlamı/anlatısı olan, çaba/zaman gerektiren ve kalıcılık içeren uğraşlarımız olmalı
-Dijital dünyada az görünmeliyiz
-Sistemden az yararlanmalı ve mümkün olduğunca veri olmaktan uzak durmalıyız
-Sistemden az yararlanan insanlarla organik iletişim kurmalıyız
-"Olay"(yeniyi kuran, dönüştüren) varsa içinde olmalıyız.
March 15, 2019
With the intensification of capitalism into neoliberalism - a process initiated barely a few decades ago - a new and subtle regime of coercion, or more precisely auto-coercion, started to manifest itself. We have now internalised the imperative of performance and self-actualisation to such a degree that we have become slaves to our own dear ambitions. Today we pride ourselves on being 'projects' and 'entrepreneurs'. But the energy invested in these ambitions merely responds to the dictate of Capital and is entangled in the competitive logic of the market.
The resilience of this new regime of control resides in three main features. First, distinctive for this new form of coercion is that it presents itself as freedom. It operates seductively, not repressively. There are no disciplinary constraints and prohibitions. Instead, neoliberalism beams forth in positivity. Hence, we welcome it and embrace it. It is us who subordinate ourselves, willingly, to this new context of domination. "The self-as-a-work-of-art amounts to a beautiful but deceptive illusion that the neoliberal regime maintains in order to exhaust its resources entirely."
Second, this kind of 'emotional capitalism' is supremely disempowering in the way that it erodes our confidence in ourselves and in our communities:
_Success as an entrepreneur pivots on the ability to offer a unique selling proposition, to hold a distinctive position, and we instrumentalise our social relationships to make that happen.
_"People who fail in the neoliberal achievement-society see themselves as responsible for their lot and feel shame instead of questioning society or the system." Class struggle has given way to an inner struggle against ourselves. As a result, disenchantment or disenfranchisement doesn't spark revolution but engenders depression.
_Finally, neoliberalism has turned citizens into consumers who are indifferent to politics and disengage from actively shaping their communities. "Participation now amounts to grievance and complaint."
Third, information technology (the author doesn't talk about life sciences) is a critical factor that reinforces the stranglehold of neoliberalism because it creates a panoptic regime of surveillance. Our daily life creates 'digital exhaust fumes' that someone, somewhere is tracing, labelling, packaging and selling to the highest bidder (*). Those who do not play by the rules or are found to be economically unattractive find themselves curtailed to an ever-shrinking opportunity space. Further, aggregating data from our daily choices and distilling patterns from these Big Data exposes us to ever more powerful mechanisms of influence and control. Han conjectures that Big Data may soon yield the psychogram of the unconscious itself.
What can we do? Given that Capital represents a new kind of transcendence, it is extremely tough to subvert its logic. Han, like other authors who have theorised in this vein, seems to advocate some sort of quietism, a retreat into an asceticism that allows us to decouple as much as is possible from the world of work and consumption. Practically, we can choose to stay out of debt. Debt destroys freedom. "Free from debt - that is, wholly free - we would truly have to act." The author relies on Nietzsche, late Foucault and Deleuze to articulate various modes of resistance to the regime of psychopolitics. Taken to its extremity, this leads to a life that is an embodiment of pure immanence; it exists only in itself. (Patrick White, in his 'Riders in the Chariot', which I happen to be reading, paints a moving picture of four misfits who convincingly embody this ideal).
I have provided here an outline of Han's argument. But this slim booklet includes more captivating ideas. It's written in a compact and forceful idiom that (except for one or two chapters) will also appeal to less philosophically savvy readers. I think Han's analysis is compelling and alerts us to a grave challenge to our freedom and the health of our society. But I keep believing that there are also forms of resistance that rely on a reinforcement of the polis rather than a move away from it. Or maybe subversive 'idiotism' and responsible citizenship are not as opposed as Han leads us to believe ...
(*) The irony is that, while I am penning this review, my 'private browser' alerts me to dozens of trackers that Goodreads is unleashing on its unsuspecting users.
The resilience of this new regime of control resides in three main features. First, distinctive for this new form of coercion is that it presents itself as freedom. It operates seductively, not repressively. There are no disciplinary constraints and prohibitions. Instead, neoliberalism beams forth in positivity. Hence, we welcome it and embrace it. It is us who subordinate ourselves, willingly, to this new context of domination. "The self-as-a-work-of-art amounts to a beautiful but deceptive illusion that the neoliberal regime maintains in order to exhaust its resources entirely."
Second, this kind of 'emotional capitalism' is supremely disempowering in the way that it erodes our confidence in ourselves and in our communities:
_Success as an entrepreneur pivots on the ability to offer a unique selling proposition, to hold a distinctive position, and we instrumentalise our social relationships to make that happen.
_"People who fail in the neoliberal achievement-society see themselves as responsible for their lot and feel shame instead of questioning society or the system." Class struggle has given way to an inner struggle against ourselves. As a result, disenchantment or disenfranchisement doesn't spark revolution but engenders depression.
_Finally, neoliberalism has turned citizens into consumers who are indifferent to politics and disengage from actively shaping their communities. "Participation now amounts to grievance and complaint."
Third, information technology (the author doesn't talk about life sciences) is a critical factor that reinforces the stranglehold of neoliberalism because it creates a panoptic regime of surveillance. Our daily life creates 'digital exhaust fumes' that someone, somewhere is tracing, labelling, packaging and selling to the highest bidder (*). Those who do not play by the rules or are found to be economically unattractive find themselves curtailed to an ever-shrinking opportunity space. Further, aggregating data from our daily choices and distilling patterns from these Big Data exposes us to ever more powerful mechanisms of influence and control. Han conjectures that Big Data may soon yield the psychogram of the unconscious itself.
What can we do? Given that Capital represents a new kind of transcendence, it is extremely tough to subvert its logic. Han, like other authors who have theorised in this vein, seems to advocate some sort of quietism, a retreat into an asceticism that allows us to decouple as much as is possible from the world of work and consumption. Practically, we can choose to stay out of debt. Debt destroys freedom. "Free from debt - that is, wholly free - we would truly have to act." The author relies on Nietzsche, late Foucault and Deleuze to articulate various modes of resistance to the regime of psychopolitics. Taken to its extremity, this leads to a life that is an embodiment of pure immanence; it exists only in itself. (Patrick White, in his 'Riders in the Chariot', which I happen to be reading, paints a moving picture of four misfits who convincingly embody this ideal).
I have provided here an outline of Han's argument. But this slim booklet includes more captivating ideas. It's written in a compact and forceful idiom that (except for one or two chapters) will also appeal to less philosophically savvy readers. I think Han's analysis is compelling and alerts us to a grave challenge to our freedom and the health of our society. But I keep believing that there are also forms of resistance that rely on a reinforcement of the polis rather than a move away from it. Or maybe subversive 'idiotism' and responsible citizenship are not as opposed as Han leads us to believe ...
(*) The irony is that, while I am penning this review, my 'private browser' alerts me to dozens of trackers that Goodreads is unleashing on its unsuspecting users.
April 11, 2025
كل شي حوالينا صار مربوط بـ”Big Data” – البيانات اللي نطلعها بكل خطوة نسويها. من أول ما نصحى نشوف التلفون، لين آخر الليل واحنا نطالع كم خطوة مشينا، شربنا ماي كفاية ولا؟
نشتغل زين ولا؟ حتى شعورنا نحاول نقيسه:
“هل أنا سعيد؟ هل أنا مُنتج؟ هل الناس تشوفني ناجح؟”
وهني يدخل مفهوم (Achievement Subject) “الفرد المُنجز” الشخص اللي طول الوقت يحاول يثبت نفسه، يشتغل على ذاته، يطور نفسه، ويكون “أفضل نسخة من نفسه”.
بس المشكلة؟ إنه طول الوقت يحس بالضغط. لأنه إذا فشل، يقول لنفسه “أنا السبب”، مو المجتمع، مو النظام، مو الظروف.
والمراقبة؟ ما عادت تحتاج كاميرات ولا شرطي يوقفك. الحين إنت تصور أكلك، تمارينك، أفكارك، حتى لحظاتك الحزينة وتنشرهم بإيدك. إنت تصير مشروع قابل للقياس. واللي يحلل هالمعلومات ويستفيد منها؟
الفرد المنجِز زبون مثالي. ما يحتاج أحد يقنعه. هو بروحه يشتري، يدفع، يشارك بياناته، لأنّه يظن إن كل هالشي يخليه أقرب للنجاح..
نشتغل زين ولا؟ حتى شعورنا نحاول نقيسه:
“هل أنا سعيد؟ هل أنا مُنتج؟ هل الناس تشوفني ناجح؟”
وهني يدخل مفهوم (Achievement Subject) “الفرد المُنجز” الشخص اللي طول الوقت يحاول يثبت نفسه، يشتغل على ذاته، يطور نفسه، ويكون “أفضل نسخة من نفسه”.
بس المشكلة؟ إنه طول الوقت يحس بالضغط. لأنه إذا فشل، يقول لنفسه “أنا السبب”، مو المجتمع، مو النظام، مو الظروف.
والمراقبة؟ ما عادت تحتاج كاميرات ولا شرطي يوقفك. الحين إنت تصور أكلك، تمارينك، أفكارك، حتى لحظاتك الحزينة وتنشرهم بإيدك. إنت تصير مشروع قابل للقياس. واللي يحلل هالمعلومات ويستفيد منها؟
الفرد المنجِز زبون مثالي. ما يحتاج أحد يقنعه. هو بروحه يشتري، يدفع، يشارك بياناته، لأنّه يظن إن كل هالشي يخليه أقرب للنجاح..
September 18, 2025
My first exposure to German philosopher Byng-Chul Han was this slim and stimulating volume. Nothing like reading about neoliberalism and the new technologies of power to throw one’s morning commute into poignant relief. Han’s language can be academic, and some of his theory rests on the nuances of the German language, which led the translator to include lots of italicized German in parentheses - and I think that his reliance on linguistic distinctions that don’t translate well perhaps could be a weakness to the universality of his theory. But overall this was readable, exciting, and interesting. Also timely. Now I’m wondering what he has to say about AI and recent political shifts.
Many passages I’d like to save to chew on, like this banger of an opener: “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 have been 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 achievements 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.”
Other points to think on: “The transparency demanded of politicians today is anything but a political demand. Transparency is not called for in political decision-making processes… Instead, and above all, the imperative of transparency served to expose or unmask politicians, to make them an item of scandal. The call for transparency presupposes occupying the position of a shocked spectator. It is not voiced by engaged citizens so much as by passive onlookers. Participation now amounts to grievance and complaint. With that, the society of transparency, inhabited by onlookers and consumers, has given rise to a spectator democracy.”
“Now, transparency is the buzzword of the second Enlightenment. Data are supposed to be a pellucid medium… The imperative of the second Enlightenment declares: everything must become data and information. The soul of the second Enlightenment is data totalitarianism, or data fetishism.”
“Human memory is a narrative, an account; forgetting forms a necessary component. In contrast, digital memory is a matter of seamless addition and accumulation. Stored data admit counting, but they cannot be recounted. Storage and retrieval are fundamentally different than remembering, which is a narrative process. Likewise, autobiography constitutes a narrative: it is memorial writing. A timeline, on the other hand, recounts nothing. It simply enumerates and adds up events or information…. Digital memory consists of indifferent - as it were, undead, points of presence. It lacks the extended horizon constituting the temporality of the living. This means that digitized life lacks animacy. Digital temporality belongs to the undead.”
Many passages I’d like to save to chew on, like this banger of an opener: “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 have been 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 achievements 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.”
Other points to think on: “The transparency demanded of politicians today is anything but a political demand. Transparency is not called for in political decision-making processes… Instead, and above all, the imperative of transparency served to expose or unmask politicians, to make them an item of scandal. The call for transparency presupposes occupying the position of a shocked spectator. It is not voiced by engaged citizens so much as by passive onlookers. Participation now amounts to grievance and complaint. With that, the society of transparency, inhabited by onlookers and consumers, has given rise to a spectator democracy.”
“Now, transparency is the buzzword of the second Enlightenment. Data are supposed to be a pellucid medium… The imperative of the second Enlightenment declares: everything must become data and information. The soul of the second Enlightenment is data totalitarianism, or data fetishism.”
“Human memory is a narrative, an account; forgetting forms a necessary component. In contrast, digital memory is a matter of seamless addition and accumulation. Stored data admit counting, but they cannot be recounted. Storage and retrieval are fundamentally different than remembering, which is a narrative process. Likewise, autobiography constitutes a narrative: it is memorial writing. A timeline, on the other hand, recounts nothing. It simply enumerates and adds up events or information…. Digital memory consists of indifferent - as it were, undead, points of presence. It lacks the extended horizon constituting the temporality of the living. This means that digitized life lacks animacy. Digital temporality belongs to the undead.”
Read
November 25, 2024Some good points on the novel mechanisms for disciplining used by neoliberalism ("Neoliberalism is the capitalism of 'Like'") and personalised ad targeting as emblematic of neoliberalism's turn toward "psychopolitics" as opposed to merely "biopolitics".
May 23, 2017
La primera referencia de este autor fue un comentario al aire por parte de Luis Eugenio, mi asesor de la tesis de maestría en humanidades que realicé sobre el tema de identidad digital, del que solo me dijo: “me platicaron de un coreano que parece que maneja algo de esos temas”. Ya no alcancé a llegar a él, y que bueno, porque de haberlo hecho, quizá mi tesis hubiera tomado otro rumbo.
El sábado pasado, reunidos en casa de unas amigas de Rebeca, salió a colación este autor --varios de los presentes trabajan en el INEGI y contaron más de una historia de terror de la que creía era una institución respetable--, tomé el libro, vi el índice y comencé a leerlo ahí mismo. Hice algo que normalmente no hago y lo pedí prestado y le devoré en horas.
Al día siguiente le comenté a Rebeca que era un muy buen resumen de ideas y problemáticas contemporáneas, y descubrí que radiografíaba, con bastante buena puntería, nuevas formas de esclavitud como las instauradas por Uber y su sharing economy; el espejismo de la libertad neoliberal; las nuevas estructuras de comunicación, que Han en particular ve con pesimismo y en decadencia, entre otras cosas.
Es curioso, bueno, me parece curioso como hay ese retorno a una concepción más conservadora de la realidad, a formas sociales más tradicionales.
Para mí, hay mucho puntos de encuentro con el pensamiento que expone Han en este breve libro, y en apariencia superficial, sobre todo cuando habla de la crisis de libertad y el poder inteligente: la máquina siempre será la máquina, el cambio en nuestro tiempo, es que la máquina permite, o aparenta permitir todo, somos libres, somos “más libres que nunca” y nunca antes fuimos tan esclavos de nosotros mismos como lo somos ahora.
Han intenta darle carpetazo a Foucault y su biopolítica, señala lo que a sus ojos fue su límite, sin embargo, por lo que leo en internet, hay un grupo voluminoso de pensadores de corte más bien marxista y lacaniano que solo señalan que lo que han propone no es ni nuevo, ni original y que simplemente ignora que las raíces de muchas de sus ideas van casi quinientos años atrás.
A mí me parece un libro amable, cándido con el lector neófito y que ayuda a englobar cuestiones más bien didácticas del mundo actual, como qué es el big data, el concepto de ludificación en aspectos laborales y personales, lo que él señala como el capitalismo de la emoción y el “nuevo” big brother cortesía de todos los que somos usuarios de alguna cuenta de redes sociales.
Todavía no terminaba de leer el pequeño libro, cuando me interesó conseguirme algo más de él y me fui por En el enjambre (ayer), y ya hoy me lancé por La sociedad de la transparencia.
Lo leo en las antípodas del pensamiento žižekiano; no he leído que Gray haga mención de Han en ningún lado, o Nassim Taleb, o cualquier otro, lo que me lleva a sospechar que pueda ser el Carlos Cuauhtémoc Sánchez de la filosofía occidental; con todo y eso, creo que puede ser necesario comprender de qué habla este autor y que el tiempo dicte si su obra tiene el peso para señalar lo obvio y sobrevivir en las discusiones.
El sábado pasado, reunidos en casa de unas amigas de Rebeca, salió a colación este autor --varios de los presentes trabajan en el INEGI y contaron más de una historia de terror de la que creía era una institución respetable--, tomé el libro, vi el índice y comencé a leerlo ahí mismo. Hice algo que normalmente no hago y lo pedí prestado y le devoré en horas.
Al día siguiente le comenté a Rebeca que era un muy buen resumen de ideas y problemáticas contemporáneas, y descubrí que radiografíaba, con bastante buena puntería, nuevas formas de esclavitud como las instauradas por Uber y su sharing economy; el espejismo de la libertad neoliberal; las nuevas estructuras de comunicación, que Han en particular ve con pesimismo y en decadencia, entre otras cosas.
Es curioso, bueno, me parece curioso como hay ese retorno a una concepción más conservadora de la realidad, a formas sociales más tradicionales.
Para mí, hay mucho puntos de encuentro con el pensamiento que expone Han en este breve libro, y en apariencia superficial, sobre todo cuando habla de la crisis de libertad y el poder inteligente: la máquina siempre será la máquina, el cambio en nuestro tiempo, es que la máquina permite, o aparenta permitir todo, somos libres, somos “más libres que nunca” y nunca antes fuimos tan esclavos de nosotros mismos como lo somos ahora.
Han intenta darle carpetazo a Foucault y su biopolítica, señala lo que a sus ojos fue su límite, sin embargo, por lo que leo en internet, hay un grupo voluminoso de pensadores de corte más bien marxista y lacaniano que solo señalan que lo que han propone no es ni nuevo, ni original y que simplemente ignora que las raíces de muchas de sus ideas van casi quinientos años atrás.
A mí me parece un libro amable, cándido con el lector neófito y que ayuda a englobar cuestiones más bien didácticas del mundo actual, como qué es el big data, el concepto de ludificación en aspectos laborales y personales, lo que él señala como el capitalismo de la emoción y el “nuevo” big brother cortesía de todos los que somos usuarios de alguna cuenta de redes sociales.
Todavía no terminaba de leer el pequeño libro, cuando me interesó conseguirme algo más de él y me fui por En el enjambre (ayer), y ya hoy me lancé por La sociedad de la transparencia.
Lo leo en las antípodas del pensamiento žižekiano; no he leído que Gray haga mención de Han en ningún lado, o Nassim Taleb, o cualquier otro, lo que me lleva a sospechar que pueda ser el Carlos Cuauhtémoc Sánchez de la filosofía occidental; con todo y eso, creo que puede ser necesario comprender de qué habla este autor y que el tiempo dicte si su obra tiene el peso para señalar lo obvio y sobrevivir en las discusiones.
September 21, 2019
«La psicopolítica neoliberal es la técnica de dominación que estabiliza y reproduce el sistema dominante por medio de una programación y control psicológicos. El arte de la vida como praxis de la libertad tiene que adoptar la forma de una des-psicologización. Desarma la psicopolítica como medio de sometimiento. Se des-psicologiza y vacía al sujeto a fin de que quede libre para esa forma de vida que todavía no tiene nombre.»
__
Puede parecer una lectura pesada, les aseguro que no lo es (vale, no tanto). Byung-Chul Han explica desde una perspectiva de implosión la hegemonía y expansividad de la data, la libertad en el libertad, las leyes desabastecedoras en nuestras vidas reales. A partir de este punto, se puede hablar de dominación. Si se compara al Big Brother con el Big Data no hay tanta lejanía de diferencia.
La desvirtualización del amor romántico extremo que le designamos a nuestros aparatos electrónicos de navegación. La data que entregamos a grandes macrocorporaciones para que hagan uso de ellas, así deliberadamente. Porque cuando __ demandó a Cambridge Analytica, la corte británica estableció el dictamen que las leyes no se abastecen al cuidado de los datos personales en lenguaje programativo en la Red. «Ni las leyes ni la historia tienen valor alguno». Este ejemplo no es mencionado en el libro. No obstante, me parece que «Nada es privado», tiene implicancia en esta problemática del uso deliberado de nuestra data personal.
__
Puede parecer una lectura pesada, les aseguro que no lo es (vale, no tanto). Byung-Chul Han explica desde una perspectiva de implosión la hegemonía y expansividad de la data, la libertad en el libertad, las leyes desabastecedoras en nuestras vidas reales. A partir de este punto, se puede hablar de dominación. Si se compara al Big Brother con el Big Data no hay tanta lejanía de diferencia.
La desvirtualización del amor romántico extremo que le designamos a nuestros aparatos electrónicos de navegación. La data que entregamos a grandes macrocorporaciones para que hagan uso de ellas, así deliberadamente. Porque cuando __ demandó a Cambridge Analytica, la corte británica estableció el dictamen que las leyes no se abastecen al cuidado de los datos personales en lenguaje programativo en la Red. «Ni las leyes ni la historia tienen valor alguno». Este ejemplo no es mencionado en el libro. No obstante, me parece que «Nada es privado», tiene implicancia en esta problemática del uso deliberado de nuestra data personal.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 26, 2021
It is not that Han doesn't make good points, they are plenty here. But there are so many glaring stupidities in this that I just can't stand, starting with the "refutation" of Marx that, to make the identitarian argument, can only come from someone with a permanent professorship at an university. Or to make the intellectual argument, from someone who wants to refute Marx by abandoning materialism completely. In general, Han will not quote anyone who isn't some German buddy of his who no one ever heard of without wasting 3 pages saying how wrong they were. I also dislike the cynical ending and the general pessimistic, anti-revolutionary attitude. Use this book to salvage the useable parts, but be not suprised if you hate the author afterwards.
June 21, 2024
“The new conception of power does not involve controlling the past, but steering the future psychologically”
เล่มนี้วิพากษ์เสรีนิยมใหม่ (Neoliberalism) ได้ถึงพริกถึงขิงดี โดยประเด็นหลักที่พูดถึงคือการการชักจูง ควบคุม และขูดรีดมนุษย์ในลักษณะ “Psychopolitics”
Hans เสนอว่าในยุคนี้ เราไม่ได้โดนขูดรีดเราผ่านทางร่างกาย “Biopolitics” อย่างการใช้แรงงานอีกต่อไป เพราะร่างกายเรามีลิมิต มีจุดที่ไปต่อไม่ไหว ดังนั้นเสรีนิยมใหม่จึงเข้ามาเล่นกับกลไลทางจิตใจหรืออารมณ์ของเรา “Psychopolitics” แล้วกระตุ้นให้เราทำอะไรบางอย่าง (ซึ่งส่วนมากก็ผ่านเทคโนโลยี) ทำให้ระบบนี้สามารถขูดรีดเราได้อย่างเต็มที่และไม่มีจุดสิ้นสุดแทน
ผู้เขียนเริ่มตีตั้งแต่ประเด็นอิสรภาพ (freedom) ของเราในการใช้ชีวิตยังไงก็ได้นั้นมันไม่จริง! ความจริงแล้วอิสระที่เราเห็นมันกำลังกดทับเราอยู่ มันปล๊อมม ยุคเสรีนิยมใหม่และ Big Data ไม่ใช่ boundless liberty แต่เป็นยุคที่ควบคุมและสอดส่องเราทุกด้านยิ่งกว่า panopticon ซะอีก
อำนาจและการควบคุมในยุคนี้ไม่ใช้การควบคุมที่เน้นความรุนแรง การบังคับ หรือปราบปรามอย่างตรงไปตรงมาเหมือนเมื่อก่อน แต่เป็นการเปิดโอกาส อนุญาติ และชักจูงให้เราลงหลุมพรางที่ชื่อว่าเทคโนโลยีแล้วควบคุมใช้งานเราผ่านจุดนี้ จุดที่ทุกอย่างดูเป็นไปได้ และเราสามารถเลือกเสพได้อย่างอิสระ ทั้งที่ตัวเลือกที่มีอยู่ก็ถูกกำหนดมาก่อนแล้ว
รวมๆ แล้วเล่มนี้พยายามเปรียบเทียบการควบคุมและใช้อำนาจแบบเก่าอย่าง “Big Brother is watching you” จากหนังสือ 1984 กับการใช้อำนาจผ่านเทคโนโลยีและ Big Data ในยุคใหม่นั่นแหละ
ในขณะที่อำนาจเก่าอย่าง Big Brother เน้นกดขี่และควบคุมแต่ไม่ได้ “จดจำ” เราขนาดนั้น แต่ Big Data ที่เป็นหนึ่งในเครื่องมือของเสรีนิยมใหม่กลับ “ไม่ลืม” ข้อมูลอะไรของเราเลย เสรีนิยมใหม่ทำให้ตัวตนอันหลากหลายของเรากลายเป็นชุดข้อมูลในระบบที่สามารถซื้อขายได้ เรากลายเป็นโปรไฟล์ให้ระบบนี้เจาะกลุ่มเป้าหมายและขายโฆษณา รวมถึง propaganda ต่างๆ ด้วย
ถ้าอยากรู้ว่ามันโยงไปถึงตรงนี้ได้ยังไงก็ไปหาอ่านกันนะ อยากให้ลองอ่าน
ปล. ชอบบทแรกที่อธิบายว่าเราไม่ใช่ subject แต่กลายเป็น project และเป็น “entrepeneur of our our own selves” และสิ่งนี้นี่เปลี่ยนให้เราเป็น ‘an absolute slave without a master’ เจ็บจี๊ดด
เล่มนี้วิพากษ์เสรีนิยมใหม่ (Neoliberalism) ได้ถึงพริกถึงขิงดี โดยประเด็นหลักที่พูดถึงคือการการชักจูง ควบคุม และขูดรีดมนุษย์ในลักษณะ “Psychopolitics”
Hans เสนอว่าในยุคนี้ เราไม่ได้โดนขูดรีดเราผ่านทางร่างกาย “Biopolitics” อย่างการใช้แรงงานอีกต่อไป เพราะร่างกายเรามีลิมิต มีจุดที่ไปต่อไม่ไหว ดังนั้นเสรีนิยมใหม่จึงเข้ามาเล่นกับกลไลทางจิตใจหรืออารมณ์ของเรา “Psychopolitics” แล้วกระตุ้นให้เราทำอะไรบางอย่าง (ซึ่งส่วนมากก็ผ่านเทคโนโลยี) ทำให้ระบบนี้สามารถขูดรีดเราได้อย่างเต็มที่และไม่มีจุดสิ้นสุดแทน
ผู้เขียนเริ่มตีตั้งแต่ประเด็นอิสรภาพ (freedom) ของเราในการใช้ชีวิตยังไงก็ได้นั้นมันไม่จริง! ความจริงแล้วอิสระที่เราเห็นมันกำลังกดทับเราอยู่ มันปล๊อมม ยุคเสรีนิยมใหม่และ Big Data ไม่ใช่ boundless liberty แต่เป็นยุคที่ควบคุมและสอดส่องเราทุกด้านยิ่งกว่า panopticon ซะอีก
อำนาจและการควบคุมในยุคนี้ไม่ใช้การควบคุมที่เน้นความรุนแรง การบังคับ หรือปราบปรามอย่างตรงไปตรงมาเหมือนเมื่อก่อน แต่เป็นการเปิดโอกาส อนุญาติ และชักจูงให้เราลงหลุมพรางที่ชื่อว่าเทคโนโลยีแล้วควบคุมใช้งานเราผ่านจุดนี้ จุดที่ทุกอย่างดูเป็นไปได้ และเราสามารถเลือกเสพได้อย่างอิสระ ทั้งที่ตัวเลือกที่มีอยู่ก็ถูกกำหนดมาก่อนแล้ว
รวมๆ แล้วเล่มนี้พยายามเปรียบเทียบการควบคุมและใช้อำนาจแบบเก่าอย่าง “Big Brother is watching you” จากหนังสือ 1984 กับการใช้อำนาจผ่านเทคโนโลยีและ Big Data ในยุคใหม่นั่นแหละ
ในขณะที่อำนาจเก่าอย่าง Big Brother เน้นกดขี่และควบคุมแต่ไม่ได้ “จดจำ” เราขนาดนั้น แต่ Big Data ที่เป็นหนึ่งในเครื่องมือของเสรีนิยมใหม่กลับ “ไม่ลืม” ข้อมูลอะไรของเราเลย เสรีนิยมใหม่ทำให้ตัวตนอันหลากหลายของเรากลายเป็นชุดข้อมูลในระบบที่สามารถซื้อขายได้ เรากลายเป็นโปรไฟล์ให้ระบบนี้เจาะกลุ่มเป้าหมายและขายโฆษณา รวมถึง propaganda ต่างๆ ด้วย
ถ้าอยากรู้ว่ามันโยงไปถึงตรงนี้ได้ยังไงก็ไปหาอ่านกันนะ อยากให้ลองอ่าน
ปล. ชอบบทแรกที่อธิบายว่าเราไม่ใช่ subject แต่กลายเป็น project และเป็น “entrepeneur of our our own selves” และสิ่งนี้นี่เปลี่ยนให้เราเป็น ‘an absolute slave without a master’ เจ็บจี๊ดด
June 20, 2019
This book has some good takes expanding on the concepts of Benthams Panopticon, Benjamins Optical Uncounsiness and Foucaults discipline society, in the terms of modern neoliberalism. Han continues where Foucault left of and makes some good observations of the lack of freedom in the face of modern technology (The shift from biopolitics to psychopolitics).
He however dismisses the marxist concept of class in the first chapter by proclaiming that we all own the means of production now since we produce more 'immaterial' products than ever before - if we look at what this actually means its clear that its a false assertion or a misunderstanding of the concept of class and the production of market valueables.
His critique of neoliberalism is alright with the exception of some strange statements on emotions: "Emotions have become a means of production" This of course makes no sense, since value can't be produced psychologically - although emotions play a role in advertisements this becomes weird take. He later on mentions "The dictatorship of emotion" which is equally meaningless.
The essay is finished with an homage to Deleuzes concept of "idiotism" which is just as baffeling as it sounds. In it Deleuze claims that all great philosophers were idiots (which here is defined as something positive, like a genius or savant) in a typical postmodern fashion. This term never leads anywhere or play any ethical role in Han's essay. In other words, a very unsatisfactory conclusion (if you can even call it that) to an eclectic and somewhat incoherent essay. Nothing more than vague assertions and observations made in a very foucauldian langauge, that being difficult to decipher and lackluster in terms of content.
The 'politics' of psychopolitics seem to be some sort of rejection of the use of social media? Han never really explains any alternative, any radical politics etc. He merely tries to analyze the current form of modern capitalism, but his own analysis becomes symptomatic of this current. All in all this book is pretty bad, and made me more reluctant to study more Foucault, thanks Han.
Not to mention this gem:
"Quantified Self is being run with an almost libidinous energy. The dataism itself is starting to develop libidinous, pretty much pornographic attributes. Dataists copulate with data. Now people talk of 'data-sexuals'. They are supposed to be 'adamantly digital' and hold data to be 'sexy'. The digit is moving closer to the phallus."
He however dismisses the marxist concept of class in the first chapter by proclaiming that we all own the means of production now since we produce more 'immaterial' products than ever before - if we look at what this actually means its clear that its a false assertion or a misunderstanding of the concept of class and the production of market valueables.
His critique of neoliberalism is alright with the exception of some strange statements on emotions: "Emotions have become a means of production" This of course makes no sense, since value can't be produced psychologically - although emotions play a role in advertisements this becomes weird take. He later on mentions "The dictatorship of emotion" which is equally meaningless.
The essay is finished with an homage to Deleuzes concept of "idiotism" which is just as baffeling as it sounds. In it Deleuze claims that all great philosophers were idiots (which here is defined as something positive, like a genius or savant) in a typical postmodern fashion. This term never leads anywhere or play any ethical role in Han's essay. In other words, a very unsatisfactory conclusion (if you can even call it that) to an eclectic and somewhat incoherent essay. Nothing more than vague assertions and observations made in a very foucauldian langauge, that being difficult to decipher and lackluster in terms of content.
The 'politics' of psychopolitics seem to be some sort of rejection of the use of social media? Han never really explains any alternative, any radical politics etc. He merely tries to analyze the current form of modern capitalism, but his own analysis becomes symptomatic of this current. All in all this book is pretty bad, and made me more reluctant to study more Foucault, thanks Han.
Not to mention this gem:
"Quantified Self is being run with an almost libidinous energy. The dataism itself is starting to develop libidinous, pretty much pornographic attributes. Dataists copulate with data. Now people talk of 'data-sexuals'. They are supposed to be 'adamantly digital' and hold data to be 'sexy'. The digit is moving closer to the phallus."
July 17, 2023
Un mondo che non è più il nostro
La libertà è diventata una trappola, ci mette in crisi.
Provoca depressione e burn-out
Perché ? Perché è tutta apparenza, o, nella migliore delle ipotesi, un lusso.
Byung-Chul Han si concentra sulle tecniche del capitalismo neoliberista che operano sulla psiche, là dove il potere agisce di soppiatto, non si oppone alla libertà, ma se ne serve
È permissivo, amichevole, subdolo.
Tutto quello che chiede è condividere, partecipare, comunicare opinioni, raccontare la nostra vita a colpi di "mi piace "
“Il like è l’amen digitale. Mentre clicchiamo like, ci sottomettiamo al rapporto di dominio. Lo smartphone non è solo un effettivo strumento di sorveglianza, ma anche un confessionale mobile. Facebook è la chiesa, la sinagoga – letteralmente, “adunanza” – globale del digitale.”
La rete ha un effetto di appiattimento e quindi il neoliberismo trasforma il cittadino attivo in un consumatore passivo.
La psicopolitica gestisce emozioni e affetti attraverso, soprattutto, le nuove tecnologie.
Oggi consumiamo più emozioni che oggetti: condizione perfetta per il controllo sociale attraverso le nuove tecnologie.
L'immensa mole di dati fornita al web genera i cosiddetti Big Data, attraverso i quali aziende come la nordamericana Acxiom dispongono di un'enorme quantità di informazioni su milioni di persone che classifica in settanta categorie.
Ogni passaggio sul web può essere osservato, registrato e utilizzato.
Un business potentissimo.
Come un Grande Fratello digitale, i Big Data permettono di fare previsioni sul comportamento delle persone e di condizionarle a livello pre-riflessivo.
La libera espressione e l'ipercomunicazione diffusa attraverso la rete diventano controllo e sorveglianza totali, portando a una vera e propria crisi di libertà.
Secondo Byung-Chul Han, questo potere intelligente potrebbe persino rilevare modelli di comportamento dall'inconscio collettivo che darebbero alla psicopolitica un controllo illimitato.
Il nostro futuro dipenderà dalla nostra capacità di utilizzare l'inutile.
Ogni volta che leggo un lavoro di Byung-Chul Han resto affascinata dal suo moralismo un po’ compiaciuto, dallo scetticismo che serpeggia tra le righe
Alla derisione dell'illusione della libertà, Psicopolitica concede una parentesi (sotto forma di breve appello) alla resistenza personale e sociale e chissà che la prossima volta l’autore riparta da qui, per raccontarci le intermittenze del presente
La libertà è diventata una trappola, ci mette in crisi.
Provoca depressione e burn-out
Perché ? Perché è tutta apparenza, o, nella migliore delle ipotesi, un lusso.
Byung-Chul Han si concentra sulle tecniche del capitalismo neoliberista che operano sulla psiche, là dove il potere agisce di soppiatto, non si oppone alla libertà, ma se ne serve
È permissivo, amichevole, subdolo.
Tutto quello che chiede è condividere, partecipare, comunicare opinioni, raccontare la nostra vita a colpi di "mi piace "
“Il like è l’amen digitale. Mentre clicchiamo like, ci sottomettiamo al rapporto di dominio. Lo smartphone non è solo un effettivo strumento di sorveglianza, ma anche un confessionale mobile. Facebook è la chiesa, la sinagoga – letteralmente, “adunanza” – globale del digitale.”
La rete ha un effetto di appiattimento e quindi il neoliberismo trasforma il cittadino attivo in un consumatore passivo.
La psicopolitica gestisce emozioni e affetti attraverso, soprattutto, le nuove tecnologie.
Oggi consumiamo più emozioni che oggetti: condizione perfetta per il controllo sociale attraverso le nuove tecnologie.
L'immensa mole di dati fornita al web genera i cosiddetti Big Data, attraverso i quali aziende come la nordamericana Acxiom dispongono di un'enorme quantità di informazioni su milioni di persone che classifica in settanta categorie.
Ogni passaggio sul web può essere osservato, registrato e utilizzato.
Un business potentissimo.
Come un Grande Fratello digitale, i Big Data permettono di fare previsioni sul comportamento delle persone e di condizionarle a livello pre-riflessivo.
La libera espressione e l'ipercomunicazione diffusa attraverso la rete diventano controllo e sorveglianza totali, portando a una vera e propria crisi di libertà.
Secondo Byung-Chul Han, questo potere intelligente potrebbe persino rilevare modelli di comportamento dall'inconscio collettivo che darebbero alla psicopolitica un controllo illimitato.
Il nostro futuro dipenderà dalla nostra capacità di utilizzare l'inutile.
Ogni volta che leggo un lavoro di Byung-Chul Han resto affascinata dal suo moralismo un po’ compiaciuto, dallo scetticismo che serpeggia tra le righe
Alla derisione dell'illusione della libertà, Psicopolitica concede una parentesi (sotto forma di breve appello) alla resistenza personale e sociale e chissà che la prossima volta l’autore riparta da qui, per raccontarci le intermittenze del presente
November 7, 2019
Un ensayo filosófico contemporáneo que se me hizo muy corto. Tiene dos partes bien marcadas, en la primera analiza el sistema neoliberal y su funcionamiento, analiza el poder que tiene sobre la ciudadanía y como afecta a la persona concreta desde un punto de vista psicológico. En la segunda parte complementa esta idea con el uso de las nuevas tecnologías, en lo que llama el fenómeno de la "transparencia", es decir, el nuevo gran hermano digital no busca reprimir a los hombres, sino que desea que entreguen toda su información libremente a través de redes sociales, información clave para el fenómeno del dataísmo, el uso indiscriminado de los datos. Una nueva forma de control, muy sutil, pero que a la vez carece de narración y se basa solo en conceptos, lo que para el autor es una falsa interpretación de la humanidad.
January 25, 2020
An updated version of "We are doomed there is no working class anymore so communism is impossible yes capitalism is bad but omnipresent and forever thus resistance is futile and
[enter Dave Mustaine vocals]
the only thing you
candoistoisolateyourselfbeagoodpersonreadthinkalot
and die."
Sex sells. Radical pessimism sells even better.
[enter Dave Mustaine vocals]
the only thing you
candoistoisolateyourselfbeagoodpersonreadthinkalot
and die."
Sex sells. Radical pessimism sells even better.
September 1, 2018
I am an existentialist. I believe that existence precedes essence, and that we don’t have a unique predetermined way to be ourselves that is right, but that we create ourselves daily. We are our project; we are what is projected into the future.
However, there is a risk in that understanding that we have to consider. In this book by Byung-Chul Han explains how focusing on our free will and on the liberation from external coercions, we may be blind to a new form of coercion, one that is internal and pushes towards performance and optimization.
f we focus too much in our free will and the undetermined nature of our beings, we may believe that how close we are to the expected performance is only about us: our skills, our will, our effort. For the same reason, we are constantly sharing freely our achievements in social media, in a constant race to show our performance and the rewards it brings. At the same time we see and compare ourselves with the rest of humanity under the same ideal, impossible to achieve by its own definition, while inside ourselves an all seeing eye shakes its head and punishes us for being less than that epitome.
Han explains how a positive and empowering slogan such as “Yes We Can” for the same reason can be heard by us as “Yes We Should”. In his words, in the past we lived in a Disziplinargesellschaft (disciplinary society) where we had to be coerced to function according to the ideal of performance, where now we live in a Leistungsgesellschaft (achievement society, sometimes translated as meritocracy) in which we subject ourselves — freely — to the pressure of achieving.
However, there is a risk in that understanding that we have to consider. In this book by Byung-Chul Han explains how focusing on our free will and on the liberation from external coercions, we may be blind to a new form of coercion, one that is internal and pushes towards performance and optimization.
f we focus too much in our free will and the undetermined nature of our beings, we may believe that how close we are to the expected performance is only about us: our skills, our will, our effort. For the same reason, we are constantly sharing freely our achievements in social media, in a constant race to show our performance and the rewards it brings. At the same time we see and compare ourselves with the rest of humanity under the same ideal, impossible to achieve by its own definition, while inside ourselves an all seeing eye shakes its head and punishes us for being less than that epitome.
Han explains how a positive and empowering slogan such as “Yes We Can” for the same reason can be heard by us as “Yes We Should”. In his words, in the past we lived in a Disziplinargesellschaft (disciplinary society) where we had to be coerced to function according to the ideal of performance, where now we live in a Leistungsgesellschaft (achievement society, sometimes translated as meritocracy) in which we subject ourselves — freely — to the pressure of achieving.
August 2, 2022
This reads like a conspiracy theorists handbook, a pamphlet of radical generalizations and often ridiculous conclusions and statements against, capitalism, technology, neoliberalism and Big Data. No comparisons, no balanced judgement, it is fully focused on the “negative”. Byung Chul-Han and his tinfoil hat forgets humanity IS living in the “best of times” with positive advancement across the board largely due to the capitalist drive that he so despises. He proposes no alternatives.
Two stars because some of the content is worth thinking about, the conclusions however, are junk.
I suspect that this guy might be some sort of anarchist
Some examples:
Big Data has announced the end of the person
who possesses free will.
Pain is constitutive for experience (Erfahrung).
Life that consists wholly of positive emotions and
the sensation of flow'2 is not human at all. The
human soul owes its defining tautness and depth
precisely to negativity:
for it is the anxiety provoked by an inscrutable
divinity which is at the heart of the capitalist
entrepreneur's frantic activity.'1
psychopolitics manages to intervene in psychic
processes in a prospective fashion. Quite possibly,
it is even faster than free will. As such, it could
overtake it. If so, this would herald the end of
freedom.12
True happiness comes from what
runs riot, lets go, is exuberant and loses
meaning - the excessive and superfluous.
That is, it comes from what luxuriates,
what has taken leave of all necessity,
work, performance and purpose.
Smartphones have been substituted for
torture chambers.
Two stars because some of the content is worth thinking about, the conclusions however, are junk.
I suspect that this guy might be some sort of anarchist
Some examples:
Big Data has announced the end of the person
who possesses free will.
Pain is constitutive for experience (Erfahrung).
Life that consists wholly of positive emotions and
the sensation of flow'2 is not human at all. The
human soul owes its defining tautness and depth
precisely to negativity:
for it is the anxiety provoked by an inscrutable
divinity which is at the heart of the capitalist
entrepreneur's frantic activity.'1
psychopolitics manages to intervene in psychic
processes in a prospective fashion. Quite possibly,
it is even faster than free will. As such, it could
overtake it. If so, this would herald the end of
freedom.12
True happiness comes from what
runs riot, lets go, is exuberant and loses
meaning - the excessive and superfluous.
That is, it comes from what luxuriates,
what has taken leave of all necessity,
work, performance and purpose.
Smartphones have been substituted for
torture chambers.
November 8, 2019
Byung Chul-Han 2019 yılı içinde keşfettiğim bir yazar oldu. Bir bakmışım nerdeyse bir yıl içinde bütün kitaplarını okumuşum. Bir tek “Yorgunluk Toplumu” raflarımda okunacaklar arasında bekliyor.
Bir yazarın birçok kitabını okuduğunuz zaman, fikirleri, düşünce biçimi, yaklaşımı iyice oturuyor kafanıza. Bazen bu her kitabında benzer söylemlerine rastlamanıza da neden oluyor.
Biyopolitika ve Foucault’un teorileri ilgimi çok çekmiştir her zaman. Burada onlarla ilgili yorumlara rastlamak güzel oldu benim açımdan. Her teZin bir antitezi vardır tabi ki.
Özgürlüğün sömürüsünü, özgürlük yanılsamasını, iktidarın güleryüzlü politikalarını, dostcanlı egemenlik anlayışını iyi analiz etmiş. Diğer kitaplarında da sıkça değindiği bir konudur bu. Hele “heyecan kapitalizmi” günümüzü ne kadar iyi tanımlayabilecek bir kavram. Heyecan, mutluluk, verimli bir hayat fetişizmi tüketiyor benliğimizi. Performans derecesi yüksek bir hayat yaşamaya ve maximize edilmiş ilişkiler sürdürmeye çalışırken nasıl insanın kendi tuzağına düştüğünü açıkça kısa ve net bir şekilde gösteriyor kitap bu anlamda. Bazen düşünüyorum da kendi ürettiği araçların kölesi olan, kendi oluşturduğu kuralların dışına çıkamayan, onları esnetip dönüştürebilmeyi başaramayan ama bir yandan çılgınca değişimi -aslında değişim diktatörlüğünü- savunduğunu iddia eden insan ne kadar özgür ve akıllı bir varlık ki?
İnsan kendi kendinin tanrısı mı acaba? Kendisinin yaratıcısı ve yok edicisi mi?
Bir yazarın birçok kitabını okuduğunuz zaman, fikirleri, düşünce biçimi, yaklaşımı iyice oturuyor kafanıza. Bazen bu her kitabında benzer söylemlerine rastlamanıza da neden oluyor.
Biyopolitika ve Foucault’un teorileri ilgimi çok çekmiştir her zaman. Burada onlarla ilgili yorumlara rastlamak güzel oldu benim açımdan. Her teZin bir antitezi vardır tabi ki.
Özgürlüğün sömürüsünü, özgürlük yanılsamasını, iktidarın güleryüzlü politikalarını, dostcanlı egemenlik anlayışını iyi analiz etmiş. Diğer kitaplarında da sıkça değindiği bir konudur bu. Hele “heyecan kapitalizmi” günümüzü ne kadar iyi tanımlayabilecek bir kavram. Heyecan, mutluluk, verimli bir hayat fetişizmi tüketiyor benliğimizi. Performans derecesi yüksek bir hayat yaşamaya ve maximize edilmiş ilişkiler sürdürmeye çalışırken nasıl insanın kendi tuzağına düştüğünü açıkça kısa ve net bir şekilde gösteriyor kitap bu anlamda. Bazen düşünüyorum da kendi ürettiği araçların kölesi olan, kendi oluşturduğu kuralların dışına çıkamayan, onları esnetip dönüştürebilmeyi başaramayan ama bir yandan çılgınca değişimi -aslında değişim diktatörlüğünü- savunduğunu iddia eden insan ne kadar özgür ve akıllı bir varlık ki?
İnsan kendi kendinin tanrısı mı acaba? Kendisinin yaratıcısı ve yok edicisi mi?
November 26, 2019
Psikopolitika, big data'nın bizi büyük bir gerçekliğe ve mutlak bilgiye değil, unutkanlığa, geleceğe karşı körlüğe, kesinliğin konforundaki yok oluşa götürdüğünü anlatıyor. Okuduğum en "hap" Byung-Chul Han kitabıydı ama bir teklifi olması kitabı kurtarıyor. Teklifi, budala olmak.
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