Héroes. Asesinato masivo y suicidio

by Franco "Bifo" Berardi

¿Qué relación hay entre el capitalismo y la salud mental? En este volumen, su libro más inquietante hasta la fecha, Franco «Bifo» Berardi se embarca en un estimulante viaje a través de la filosofía, el psicoanálisis y recientes acontecimientos en busca de las raíces sociales de la enfermedad mental de nuestra época.
Mediante el relato de una serie de horrores –el asesino, Joker, de Aurora; Anders Breivik; las masacres de las escuelas americanas; la epidemia de suicidios en Corea y Japón; y la última avalancha de los suicidios de «la austeridad» –, Héroes se adentra con bravura en las regiones más oscuras de la obsesión contemporánea por competir y estar hiper-conectados. Este volumen corona cuatro décadas del trabajo intelectual radical de Berardi, que desarrolla percepciones psicoanalíticas de su amigo Félix Guattari y propone una ironía distópica como estrategia para desembarazarnos del fatídico abrazo del capitalismo absoluto.

Bifo es un maestro del activismo global en la era de la depresión. Su misión es analizar el capitalismo real de nuestros días. Que el lector respire entre estas páginas la desesperación de las revueltas y disfrute con este «trabajo de lo negativo». Geert Lovink, Fundador y director del Institute of Network Cultures

«Entre quienes diagnostican los males de nuestra época, Berardi es sin duda de los más agudos.» Slate

«¿Busca algo que vaya más allá de la superficie de las cosas?... en última instancia, Bifo aboga por el poder ilimitado de la imaginación y la ironía como los únicos antídotos en un mundo que urge reconstruir desde cero.» Bookslut

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, Psychology, Sociology, History

205 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2015

About the author

Franco "Bifo" Berardi (born 2 November 1948 in Bologna, Italy) is an Italian Marxist theorist and activist in the autonomist tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology within post-industrial capitalism. Berardi has written over two dozen published books, as well as a more extensive number of essays and speeches.

Unlike orthodox Marxists, Berardi's autonomist theories draw on psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis and communication theory to show how subjectivity and desire are bound up with the functioning of the capitalism system, rather than portraying events such as the financial crisis of 2008 merely as an example of the inherently contradictory logic of capitalist accumulation. Thus, he argues against privileging labour in critique and says that "the solution to the economic difficulty of the situation cannot be solved with economic means: the solution is not economic." Human emotions and embodied communication becomes increasingly central to the production and consumption patterns that sustain capital flows in post-industrial society, and as such Berardi uses the concepts of "cognitariat" and "info labour" to analyze this psycho-social process. Among Berardi's other concerns are cultural representations and expectations about the future — from proto-Fascist Futurism to post-modern cyberpunk (1993). This represents a greater concern with ideas and cultural expectations than the determinist-materialist expression of a Marxism which is often confined to purely economic or systemic analysis.

(via Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

What most impressed me was the metaphorical density of an act that could be interpreted as breaking the separation between spectacle and real life (or real death, which is the same). I doubt that James Holmes has ever read Guy Debord. Often, people act without reading the relevant texts.

Despite the often glib treatment of the grisly, Heroes is an astonishing examination of our times. It is engaging and often raw. Semiocapitalism has arrived and folks there aren't a lot of options (read remedies), particularly the traditional ones.

Now, it is finally crystal clear: resistance is over. Capitalist absolutism will not be defeated and democracy will never be reinstated. That game is over.

Heidegger was prescient. Being, dreaming, sleeping and dwelling have all been absorbed and refigured by The Machine. We are left estranged, desperate and yet alone -- despite the common straits. I wasn't expecting to be so affected when I picked this up from the Philosophy table at the Strand.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extraordinarily bleak book, and not only because Berardi has taken high-profile mass murderers and suicides as his subject. Far more troubling than the killers themselves or the increasingly popular phenomenon of mass murder is what Berardi sees as the atmosphere of nihilistic malaise that produces them, and the resulting implications for global society.

The mass killers are not an aberration from the prevailing socio-cultural zeitgeist; rather, they are simply an extreme manifestation of it. In this way, Berardi sees them as the "heroes" of the decadent age of neoliberalism. The word "hero" is not being used here in the popular sense of heroism as conspicuous moral goodness. Rather, Berardi uses the word in a more academic sense, in which the hero is the ultimate exemplar of the cultural world from which he originates, taking the prevailing cultural attitude to such an extreme that he becomes the very embodiment of it. The "heroes" Berardi discusses are sick individuals, but they are also expressions of a sick society, and Berardi draws fascinating and disturbing parallels between their self-justifications and those of the elites who steward (or rather, fail to steward) the global socio-economic regime of capitalist absolutism.

So what exactly is the nature of this sick society? An important element for Berardi is what he believes to be the neoliberal destruction of Humanism, which is the moral and intellectual foundation of modern civilization (and possibly all of civilization, given Berardi's definition of it); and the replacement of the Humanistic regime with a brutal and all-pervading social Darwinism. For the Humanist, nature is a hostile and mercurial force whose laws, to the extent that they are discernible, are either indifferent or antithetical to the human interest. Civilization was forged when societies organized themselves against the callousness of nature and built institutions--political, social, cultural, and philosophical--that could mediate the annihilating power of natural law for the preservation of human law, the law of compassion that makes a humanistic life of genuine human flourishing possible. One can detect in the background Machiavelli's image of a republic as a temporal shield that cultivates the virtue of the people and protects them against the capriciousness of fortuna.

The neoliberal project, with its hyper-individualism, its hostility to nearly every altruistic or cooperative social institution, its extreme emphasis on wealth and financial success as the truest measure of human value, and its lionization of the solo entrepreneur who claws his way to the top without any social support, has essentially broken down the barrier between human law and the laws of nature, turning social life into a great agonistic struggle in which "society", true to Thatcher's proclamation of its non-existence, is replaced by a collection of isolated individuals struggling desperately to demonstrate their personal worth by striking it rich and meeting cultural expectations for what they are "supposed" to be accomplishing in their lives. Indeed, there is no (longer) any such thing as society, and its abolition has replaced the law of compassion with the law of the jungle: survival of the fittest; the most grisly popular caricature of Darwinism.

But in this egoistic and materialistic culture of winners and losers, what happens to the losers -- particularly when their culturally-constructed "win at all costs" mentality butts up against the everyday precariousness of their social and economic lives as the merest subjects of a nebulous neoliberal elite, tossed about by the tempest of a radically volatile deterritorialized financial capitalism? Mass murderers like Pekka-Eric Auvinen, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-Hui Cho provide interesting if extreme case studies. Internalizing their sense of inferiority, they sought to achieve a measure of "success" in this cultural wasteland by turning the tables on society, making themselves into the "lonely winners" idolized by popular culture, even if only for a moment and at the cost of their lives.

Thus, before shooting up their respective high schools, Auvinen and Harris articulated eerily similar personal sentiments about themselves and their place on the pecking order. They both spoke of themselves as uniquely enlightened, intelligent, and strong-willed individuals in a world of mindless sheep. They saw their murder sprees as assertions of their "right" to "win" and predate; a right they had been prevented from exercising in any other way due to the repression of living in a "society", or a collection of inferior people. Both used Darwinian language and metaphors in their writings.

"No mercy for the scum of the earth!" Auvinen wrote in his manifesto. "HUMANITY IS OVERRATED! It's time to put NATURAL SELECTION & SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST back on tracks!"

On the day of the Columbine massacre, Harris wore a t-shirt with the words "Natural Selection" printed on it.

Another startling fact about the spree killers of the last few decades is the extent to which they prepared for the media attention their atrocities would garner them. Harris and Klebold hoped that their story would be made into a film. James Holmes, the perpetrator of a 2012 killing spree at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, went further by actually placing himself in the film role he wanted; that of the Joker from the Batman universe. His erasure of the distinction between spectacle and real life is symptomatic of the general erasure of barriers between sign, signifier, and the material forms these simulacra originally represented. In the new semiocapitalism, simulacra have taken the place of the "real" things they signify. The symbol has become more real that what is symbolized. In finance capitalism, abstract financial assets are traded, borrowed against, and disposed of without reference to any actual, tangible wealth. Spectacle has become substance, and in fact formless images and simulated assets are becoming the primary currency of the semiocapitalist system, resulting in a general social subsumption of the actual by the imagined.

Anders Breivik, in contrast to the aforementioned killers, had consciously political motives for his ghastly act of terrorism, but these in turn were underlain by a desperate psychological need for belonging that arose from acute social vulnerability, and this is also symptomatic of absolute capitalism's paradoxical destruction and re-constitution of territoriality.

In Berardi's own words:

"Financial capitalism is based on a process of unrelenting deterritorialization, and this is causing fear to spread among those who are unable to deal with the precariousness of daily life and the violence of the labour market. This fear in turn provokes a counter-effect of aggressive re-territorialization by those who try to grasp some form of identity, some sense of belonging, because only a feeling of belonging offers the semblance of shelter, a form of protection. But belonging can only be conclusively proved by an act of aggression against the other, the combined effect of deterritorialization in the sphere of financial capitalism and of re-territorialization in the realm of identity is leading to a state of permanent war."

In the end, Berardi advocates for an almost buddhistic detachment from the mores and expectations of everyday life as the only possible way to undermine the hegemonic reign of financial capitalism. Since every aspect of personal, social, and cultural life has been drawn into the social Darwinian "game", the world has become divided between oppressive "winners", and violently reactionary "losers". The only hope Berardi seems to see is in refusing to play the game.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The naked reality of capitalism is today on display. And it's horrible.

————

The subject of this book is not merely crime and suicide, but more broadly the establishment of a kingdom of nihilism and the suicidal drive that is permeating contemporary culture, together with a phenomenology of panic, aggression and resultant violence. This is the point of view from which I’m looking at mass murder, focusing in particular on the spectacular implications of these acts of killing, and on their suicidal dimension.

There really seems to be two (probably really three, as suicide begins coupled with the mass murdered but is eventually broken off in the latter half of the book) distinct explorations here – there is the “mass murder and suicide” of the title – the inadvertent heroes of a nihilistic society; and then there is the shift of capitalism to semiocapitalism, where we trade in signifiers as opposed to currency, or that the abstract signifiers (the shifting of algorithms, thought capital as worth, and techno-information-as-value) have become the predominant currency. Berardi attempts to link these two – that semiocapitalism is a form which produces nihil, and is in its essense “annihilating nihilism” where the easiest way to grow abstract value is by destroying concrete wealth/structure. He attempts to link this shifting of signifiers – deterritorialization – as the undermining factor creating a culture of nihilism which produces these mass-murders. But, he also focuses a great deal on the amount of time we as society are hooked into the internet, and how the constant exposure to simulation is in its self an undermining factor. And he tries to link this exposure to simulation as a replacement for parental upbringing, where we learn more by exposure to machines and simulation than parental interaction. Also, suicide is originally explored through the confines of these mass killers killing themselves at the end of their rampage, but later in the book he looks at suicide as cultural phenomenon, such as the wave of suicides in Japan in 1977 and some Balinese mass suicides that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century, over 100 years ago. He does eventually bring that focus up the past decade though. If that all sounds a bit jumbled, well, it is.

First, the title is obviously meant to be provocative. While he does make the argument that these people are “heroes” it’s not meant in a positive light, and it’s caged in the terms of nihilism. Even then, the argument is a bit silly, as he’s really just saying that they are by-products of a nihilistic society, which is accurate, but likely doesn’t sell as many books. And, truthfully, his attempts to cobble together a thesis around massacres that happened over the course of decades, are mostly unrelated, and span various cultures all falls a bit flat. He’s a bit like Žižek where he drops a bunch of pop culture references – it always feels like Žižek talks about pop culture as signifier, but Berardi seems to jump directly to where it is evidence and the links are tenuous at best.

Completely unsurprisingly – for someone who was buddies with Delueze – the sections that focus specifically on capitalism are the strongest and best argued of the book; I don’t necessarily feel like he’s saying anything that hasn’t been said either by Deleuze and Guattari, or even by economists since the 2006/2007 collapse, but he is easy to read, and shines a light on the problems of capitalism as a destroying (and enslaving) force here in the second decade of the millennium. He also makes some solid ties between debt enslavement / economic burden and suicide, but, again, it’s nothing that has not been said before, and in fact he admits as much in his conclusion – in fact, the overall conclusion of the book (spoiler alert I suppose) is that nothing can be done. He offers some almost platitudinous suggestions in the final three pages of the book, but the book itself is darkly nihilistic in exposing our nihilism.

That’s not to say that he’s wrong in the book – the premise that society is increasingly nihilistic and thus more prone to creating the type of individual who perpetrates these type of massacres is in itself spot on, it’s just a much bigger argument than this slim book can support, especially when half of it is specifically focused on the new state of capitalism, which in itself requires a much more thorough investigation.

[Cary · Rating 5 out of 5]

More crit. lit. to usher me through my first full week of working at Lowe's. Starting to rethink selling washer and dryers as my anti-Oedipal calling.

[Nuno R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brave, surprising and brilliant.

[T · Rating 1 out of 5]

Depressing and derivative, anyone got any lithium?

[Finn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was late coming to this book. I think I kept dodging it because I had attitude about so many of my peers reading European philosophy that really couldn't speak to our condition in the US, especially when it comes to race and its role within capitalism.
And to be real, this book doesn't do exactly what I anticipated it wouldn't do: talk much at all about race and gender. But I think I must have come to peace with that because I became fascinated enough with what he was saying that I could set aside those oversights, and just hear what the man was trying to say. (So with that said and as a warning, he really doesn't deal with the global south so my below review doesn't either.)

I just turned the last page so this is off the cuff, rambling I'm sure. The book is only partially about crazy ass school shooters and the like. The scope of the book is much more sweeping. He's talking about the ways that technological advances combined with neo liberal and financial capitalism is destroying all of our ability to relate to one another, maintain stable senses of community, build solidarity to fight bosses, injustices, etc. In short our current environment is turning us into extremely anxious, lonely, precarious individuals. He never said this in the book, but a take away I had is that he's alluding to the fact that the mass murderers are what many of us could become if our mental health issues continue to go unaddressed. And the solution to our mental health issues (mass anxiety and depression) cannot be addressed with an army of therapists. It's a consequence of the ways that late capitalism has destroyed all of our social relations, how we are -more and more- socializing via screens where emotions can only be one directional, not shared or collaborative. Our jobs tend towards extreme productivity of increasingly bizarre things and services, jobs done increasingly in isolation, or in short spurts (how many of us or our peers have several jobs, with each place of employment conveniently off the hook to provide any real security). We're all suffering alone, pushed to be in high-anxiety mode while the logistics of our life make it hard to have real, in person connection with other people. So yeah, we're all crazy at this point. Some people more than others, perhaps due to the privileges that some people have access to: the very singular ("neoliberal"?) notion of self care and all the things you can buy to do so (acupuncture and therapy sessions, gym memberships, organic food and low sugar low carb diets, etc.). Which is to point out that there's so very few options in today's society - including our alternative sub cultures some of us come into: the queer scene, the anarchist scene, the punk scene - where we can provide care and connection to one another on a consistent basis.

Bifo, from my reading, seems to mark the starting point of this disintegration to Margaret Thatcher and her declaration that the individual is all that exists, fuck your family, your community, capital will rule everything. That does seem to be the general tone of things, dismal as it sounds. (a useful way to understand neo-liberalism: social darwinism as an economic model?)
Although I do think Thatcher's "there is no alternative" declaration that ushered in a next level of free flowing capitalism is note-worthy, I cannot see that as the beginning. When I think about things like social relations and cultures getting obliterated and human misery becoming just a matter of collateral damage for the sake of certain individuals amassing as much wealth as possible, I can't help but think about how settler states like the US came to be, or how all this wealth got extracted for the sake of Europe and its colonists in far off colonies.

One piece that really stuck with me was his notion -or maybe he is restating Baudrillard's theory in a more digestible prose - of semiocapitalism. I had to look this up, but "semiosis" means: "any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning." I believe Baudrillard wrote a whole book about semiocapitalism, but here's what I took away from the idea through reading Bifo's book: Now that the industrial age has come to an end, for the most part, in the Western/Global North, socializing mostly takes place through third party mediums (ie our phones), and financial capitalism is what's keeping the system puttering along, our relation as workers in this world is one where we have very few material connections. We are disconnected to the processes that produces the products we use day to day; we don't make them and we don't know who makes them. Our labor is often service labor, or cognitive labor that takes place using computers. The capitalist society we live in is mostly producing experiences and representations of representations. Combine this reality with the fact that many of us don't live where our family lives and our often superficial relationships with the place we currently live and what do you have aside from not-much-money-to-live? An identity crisis. We're left to find meaning in mere representations of meaningful things, such as loving relationships, "our people" - whatever people that may be - pre colonization, war, trade deals, sexuality, family, etc.

(A more personal observation:) This really struck me in part because it reminded me of my experience with radical queer scenes and people. We often have even less connection to what it means to be queer beyond what it means this year because it is not something we can learn from our parents, or grandparents. So we reinvent a vocabulary, an ethic, a lifestyle with each new generation (which feels like it's about four year cycles). Queer people, particularly the ones who are transplants to cities and went to college, seem to always be on the cutting edge of the internet. We're always of the now or the near-future, depicting the specificity of our identities in this day and age, in the same tone and tenor of social media threads and memes. It usually comes across as extremely individualistic. Our notion of community mostly surrounds the group of friends we have right now before we all get dispersed due to gentrification and grad school opportunities. There's a sever lack of understanding what the lives of queer people, lesbians, fags and the gender-allusive folks among those worlds were like in the 80s, 70s, 60s, not to mention way earlier. Sure, we have simplified, out-of-context meme quotes from Audre Lorde, but collectively we're basically out here struggling in a techno hell scape that doesn't speak to our experiences being queer without real direction or mentors. Not to say this isn't a feature of many communities of my generation, queer or not, but this is what stuck out to me, a white gender queer dyke in San Francisco in 2018.

Ok finally, I just want to say that this book rattled Bifo himself. His own anxious tone really came through in the closing paragraph. I noticed from other reviewers this caused some sideways glances, that for them his nervous energy weakened what he was trying to say. But I respect that someone can drop the all-knowing philosopher song and dance, and emote about the way writing and researching what he keeps referring to as this "horrible book," can unravel you and point you in really strange directions. The pressure to give a solution to the misery must have been great, but how can you dole out hope when you just spent years uncovering how all encompassing our misery has become.

[aa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly this book deserves no more than 3 stars due to Berardi's frustrating liberal humanism, but I gave it 4 because he laid out some interesting ideas I hadn't really considered, which might help conceptualizing the present epoch.

Luisa Murano, an Italian philosopher, is cited by Berardi as describing language formation being associated with the "affective relation between the body of the learner and the body of the mother. The deep, emotional grasp on the double articulation of language, on the relation between signifier and signified in the linguistic sign, is something that is rooted in the trusted reliance on the affective body of the mother." Since early development is increasingly coming from machines as opposed to parents or other humans, the loss of empathy that might contribute to these mass shootings makes sense. I'm definitely going to chew on this for a bit. In fact, I found looked up her and found that Luisa Murano doesn't seem to have much published in English. I hope that will be remedied sometime soon.

I've heard of the concept deterritorialization before, but have never been able to get through Anti-Oedipus where it was originally elaborated, so it was nice to get a clear definition in this book. Basically, due to the subsumption of daily life in technology and the internet, the physical territory around humankind is becoming less relevant or important to us. What follows is a sense of displacement. Berardi suggests that the rise in reactionary nationalism is a response to this situation, in that people are so desperate for re-territorialization that they cling to old fictions like nationalism. Just throwing it out there...what if this is related to the rise of identity politics?

As any book about culture in the 21st century should, this one explores the Hikikomori phenomenon. What was notable to me was "most of the hikikomori persons he interviewed demonstrate independent thinking and a sense of self that the current Japanese environment could not accommodate. Meeting hikikomori persons during my own journeys in Japan, I found that they are acutely conscious that only by extricating themselves from the routine of daily life could their personal autonomy be preserved." I've had a similar analysis about the way people react to smartphones. Sure, I'm against them, the internet, and everything else, but it seems like the critique of people bringing out their smartphones in public actually compliments the hell of a physical reality around us. This section of the book reminds me of that thought.

In the last section he briefly analyzes what could be done in response to all this. Besides validating everything anarchists already do without knowing it, he talks about some confusing theoretical concept that I couldn't figure out after reading twice. Oh well.

It was a worthy read for these points and a few others. Since I've already accepted the doom-and-gloom premise, it was only mildly depressing.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solidly argued and inclusive consideration of a recent trend which posits the uptick of suicide -- particularly of those which follow large scale acts of aggression and violence -- as a condition of late capitalism's cleaving of identity and value from interpersonal, physical experience. Berardi continues from Baudrillard's theories of simulation and disconnection to assert that humanity is acting out against feelings of oppressive futility in modern professional and social exchanges, retreating into aggressive identity politics in the absence of more traditional inclusive and defined spaces which have eroded alongside industrial labor.

Two years since its publication, Heroes feels eerily and frustratingly relevant, offering cogent insight into 2017's alarming spate of domestic terrorism that goes beyond the political and psychological platitudes which generally dominate news coverage of the events. Pair with Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life for a dispiriting yet not hopeless portrait of the Trump-era United States that feels as prescient as it does evergreen.

[Dipa Raditya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sebuah jawaban tentang pertanyaan klise. Benarkah alienasi bisa berdampak secara struktural?

Bifo mencoba menggali keterkaitan hyperkonektivitas, ideologi dan suprastruktur kapitalisme yang menurut hematnya berjalin kelindan dengan mass depression. Alih-alih mencoba keluar dari situ yang terjadi ada suicide atau mengeluarkan amarah ke publik melalui mass murder. Ada sebuah kekecewaan yang terakumulasi namun kecil nya ruang politik yang tersedia membuat alienasi akibat kapitalisme tingkat lanjut mampu terjadi.

[Theo Austin-Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

The normative prescription of dystopian irony that Bifo takes on at the end seems vastly underdeveloped and somewhat tagged on as an afterthought but aside from that this is a really impressive work conveying how much of a charnel house things really are. My suggestion for others who wanna read this is to have Maurizio Bianchi’s Mectpyo Bakterium playing on loop with big wired headphones on in the dead of night - I’d imagine this would make a good pairing/double-bill with Ligotti’s Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bifo tries to mimic Focault's opus on punishment. So here he goes on about a case. He is cherry picking the details. But that is less relevant. The documentation is only from the press, I assume the Italian translations as he has a hard time speaking English. And it is written from the god perspective. Which makes the whole case a fairy tale.

[Guythebored · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questo libro vi farà incazzare per due motivi opposti:

1) se la vostra impalcatura intellettuale è costruita sulle fondamenta della volontà individuale e mai prende seriamente la contestualizzazione socio-economica quando si parla di crimini e misfatti vari o, ovviamente se dal punto di vista ideologico siete all'estremo opposto rispetto all'autore (e riconoscere il neo-liberismo come una ideologia già sarebbe un passo avanti. Il post-ideologico non esiste, è esso stesso un'ideologia, anzi, in realtà è una religione, data l'inafferrabilità della sua struttura economica ultracapitalistica, superaccellerata).

2) se concordate con le tesi espresse da Bifo, come il sottoscritto ad esempio.

E in ogni caso già incazzarsi sarebbe un risultato positivo.

Si, perché è la depressione la reazione più istintiva che può emergere da questo saggio che parte prendendo come riferimento un dato statistico: negli ultimi 40 anni la quantità di suicidi è aumentata del 60% (SESSANTAPERCENTO). Che cosa è successo negli ultimi 40 anni? Beh, le società sono state soppiantate dagli individui, la deterritorializzazione ha minato le fondamenta delle basi identitarie di milioni di persone e ha reso il "padrone" "invisibile" facendo di fatto scomparire l'organizzazione borghese del lavoro, basata sulla tutela dei lavoratori con il quale il padrone DEVE convivere, la solidarietà tra i lavoratori (specialmente tra quelli cognitivi) è sostanzialmente sparita e la competizione tra i singoli individui è diventata lo sport principale nelle aziende di tutto il mondo (con un estremo calo dell'efficienza dei lavoratori stessi, che presto verranno totalmente sostituiti dagli algoritmi al nanosecondo che già ora rendono incomprensibili ai più le transazioni finanziarie che dominano il mondo), la politica ha perso la sua rilevanza e probabilmente non la riavrà indietro: la mediazione è finita non ci sono più filtri tra la persona il capitale, che è ormai un entità astratta e teologica.

Le persone saltano dai grattacieli della super-futuristica Seul (la Corea del Sud ha superato il Giappone nel tasso di suicidi) mentre nel parco sottostante i ragazzi fissano in silenzio il loro Smartphone Samsung, un'azienda che ha sostanzialmente sostituito un governo.
Nel frattempo, in Europa e negli Stati Uniti coloro che vogliono andarsene decidono di portare con se il più alto numero di persone, in una sorta di revanscismo che da vittime del bullismo sviluppatosi dall'ideologia neo-liberista che non da spazio (letteralmente non li vuole includere nel discorso pubblico, se non per deriderli o condannarli) agli strani, ai brutti, ai pigri e agli stupidi, uccidono in nome del "darwinsimo sociale": da vittime a carnefici, in nome del nuovo fasciocapitalismo.

Intorno agli stabilimenti della Foxcon a Shenzen ci sono tre milioni di metri quadri di rete protettiva, posti lì per bloccare l'ondata di suicidi che l'aumento vertiginoso della produzione ha portato tra i lavoratori stremati.

Probabilmente lo schermo sui cui compare questo testo che sto scrivendo è stato assemblato lì, alla 14 ora di lavoro, a 5 euro al giorno - e quando leggo i fan di Tatcher e Reagan che deridono i "sinistrorsi" perché "il libbberismo (si scritto così) qui da noi mica ci è arrivato per davvero" penso che in parte abbiano ragione e sorrido.

Bifo lo scrive, non si torna indietro la nostra vita è questa o diventerà questa, il sistema economico è nel nostro sistema nervoso per motivi biopolitici o lo sarà per le implementazioni tecnologiche che non tarderanno ad arrivare. Quindi che fare? Non smettere di ribellarsi, anche se non si ha speranza di vincere, non dimenticare l'empatia e ridere in faccia al nemico. Anche se è ovunque e senza volto.

Una roba rassicurante no?

[Kilburn Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide, Franco "Bifo" Berardi delves into the dark underbelly of late-stage capitalism, exposing the festering psychic wounds inflicted by a neoliberal regime that equates existence with competitive consumption and failure with existential annihilation. Through a hyper-intellectual lens, Berardi unveils how the modern subject, conditioned by a toxic ideology of self-optimisation and ruthless individualism, spirals into acts of seemingly senseless violence—acts that, upon closer examination, are horrifyingly logical within their socio-political context.
Berardi's thesis is a sombre reflection on the pathology of our time, a forensic analysis of the ideological edifice that exalts success at any cost whilst mercilessly condemning those who fall short. The mass shooter, in Berardi's view, is not an aberration but the extreme avatar of the very cultural logic that has saturated Western society. Drawing heavily on the psychoanalytic traditions of Freud, Lacan, and Laing, Berardi posits that the figure of the mass murderer is a product of neoliberalism's internal contradictions—a subject formed at the intersection of hyper-individualism, alienation, and the failure to meet impossible standards of strength and success.
The crux of Berardi's argument is that the psychopathology of the mass shooter represents the apex expression of a world in which social Darwinism has been twisted into an ideology of meritocratic violence. Anders Breivik, with his grotesque manifesto filled with vitriol for feminists, Muslims, and "cultural Marxists", becomes the ideal symbol of this contemporary malaise. Yet Berardi astutely observes that Breivik's worldview, while radicalised, is not wholly disconnected from the mainstream ideologies espoused by neoliberal leaders like George W. Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, or David Cameron. The venomous rhetoric of strength, purity, and individual responsibility that pervades Breivik's manifesto is, in fact, a crystallised form of the broader neoliberal discourse that frames Western politics.
It is here that Berardi's analysis becomes most chilling. He argues that the very structures of neoliberal governance, with their incessant demand for economic growth and social competition, incubate a form of psychic despair among those unable to compete. The individual, confronted with the reality of their own inadequacy within this system—too weak to win the game but too conditioned to believe in the game's absolute legitimacy—reaches an unbearable existential impasse. The mass murder, then, becomes a final, violent assertion of self-worth, a way for the "loser" to reclaim agency by acting out the social Darwinist fantasies of strength that neoliberalism holds up as the ultimate good.
Berardi's analysis of Pekka-Eric Auvinen, the Finnish school shooter who penned the grotesquely titled "Natural Selector's Manifesto", reinforces this interpretation. Auvinen's belief in the right of the strong to triumph over the weak is nothing more than neoliberalism's laissez-faire cruelty in its rawest form. Auvinen's disillusionment stems not from a rejection of this ideology but from his own failure to embody it. He perceives himself as unfit, and therefore, the only logical recourse becomes an explosion of violence—an act that embodies both the neoliberal exaltation of strength and the individual's awareness of his own disempowerment.
It is in this collision of cynicism and failure that Berardi identifies the most dangerous ideological concoction. The "cynical loser"—a term that encapsulates the violent disillusionment of men like Breivik and Auvinen—emerges as the quintessential subject of neoliberalism's breakdown. Such individuals cling to the belief in the neoliberal ethic of survival of the fittest but cannot reconcile this with their own perceived inadequacies. As Berardi notes with grim precision, the mass shooter's logic becomes tragically clear: if one cannot succeed within the system, the only path to self-assertion is through the annihilation of others—and ultimately, the self.
Yet Berardi does not stop at diagnosing the individual psychosis of the mass shooter. His critique of neoliberalism extends to its broader effects on society, positing that the psychic fragmentation seen in these violent outbursts is symptomatic of a collective malaise. The market-driven ideology that equates human value with productivity and strength, whilst marginalising vulnerability, has stripped away any semblance of community or solidarity. The social contract, under neoliberalism, is no longer built on mutual care or shared humanity, but on competition, exploitation, and the relentless pursuit of personal gain. The mass murder, then, is not merely an act of individual pathology but a mirror held up to the entire social order—a reflection of a society that has lost its soul.
In Berardi's view, the ideology of the mass murderer is not so far removed from the neoliberal mainstream; it is merely its extreme expression, distilled to its most violent core. The victims of these massacres are the sacrificial lambs in a system that glorifies competition to the point of absurdity, and the murderers are the prophets of a dying world order—ones who have taken the logic of neoliberalism to its most terrifying conclusion. In this sense, Berardi sees the acts of violence he examines as both a culmination and a condemnation of the world we inhabit. They are the death throes of a civilisation that, in its pursuit of individualism, has cannibalised itself.
Ultimately, Heroes is less a study of the mass murderer as an individual than it is an indictment of the neoliberal culture that fosters this kind of psychic rupture. Berardi offers no easy solutions, no clear path out of this morass. Instead, he presents a grim vision of a world in which the very structures that claim to promote freedom and prosperity have, in fact, generated a fertile breeding ground for despair, violence, and nihilism. The mass murderer, in this analysis, is not an anomaly but a harbinger of what lies at the end of the neoliberal road—a world where the logic of competition has obliterated any sense of shared humanity, leaving only isolated individuals, trapped in their own alienation, lashing out in acts of ultimate destruction.
In sum, Heroes is a deeply unsettling, brilliantly articulated exploration of the ways in which contemporary society, driven by the imperatives of neoliberalism, has created the conditions for its own undoing. Berardi's work is a stark reminder that the violence we see in mass shootings is not an aberration, but the logical consequence of a world that has fetishised strength, competition, and individualism to the point of dehumanisation. In Berardi's hands, the mass murderer is not simply a criminal but a symptom—a symptom of a civilisation in crisis, one that can only be understood by confronting the terrifying ideologies that underlie its everyday operations.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Critical theory can at times, offer powerful, haunting observations about the state of our world...but it always seems to need some broad theme or motif to really ground that interrogation.

Franco Berardi's choice to bring that lens to mass shootings doesn't do him, or the topic, much good. Heroes makes some meaningful, if predictable points for someone published by Verso, but it also relies on some tiresome theory generalities, most of which are cribbed verbatim from Jean Baudrilliard (eye-roll).

And the way he draws tangential connections between school shootings, corporate culture, techno/semio-capitalism, Japanese suicides, the Korean war, etc. feels less like a web of inspired connections, and more like the work of someone who lacks the rigor to really dig deeply into any one of those gruesome concerns (usually one thing theory is good at).

Maybe I need to read his more major works, but Heros feels sloppy, undisciplined, rant-ish, and ultimately fizzles out in the anemic final chapter.

I used to find critical theory dense and intimidating. A lot of this struck me as embarassing.

[… · Rating 1 out of 5]

The thesis that mass murderers and those who commit suicide are the symbolic apotheosis or perfect embodiment of modern nihilism is well taken, but the title of the book is about the only interesting concept the author comes up with. Authors like this seem to use their work as a vessel to repeat cliched political tropes about capitalism, gun ownership etc. and not only is it lazy, it isn’t remotely convincing. Byung Chul Han is writing similarly themed work with much more finesse and originality.

[Mahmoud Awad · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Contrary to the imagined cybercultural utopia, the internet has been responsible for a resurgence in fanaticism and intolerance. Political and religious niche groups can be regarded as digital tribes that enter the online space with the intention of being confirmed and reassured in their paranoiac fears and phobias. In these online echo chambers, real people are displaced by the phobic ghosts
of otherness, and the possibility of tolerant, democratic debate is finally obliterated."

[Clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some thoughts in no particular order:
- i liked bifo's reframing of late stage capitalism to "semiocapitalism" as it tells the reader more about the unique circumstances of the flow and forms of capital today
- i read this as i'm rereading Jackie Wang's Carceral Capitalism and found a lot of overlap in their analyses of financialization and neoliberal deregulation, making a note that I want to think more about these overlaps
- the segments within chapters were often pretty short, and i'm divided whether or not I found that style helpful as it mimics the way my own brain jumps from topic to topic, or whether I agree with other reviews that would have preferred bifo to expand and lean more into transition rather than make these leaps.

The content warnings for the book are in the title!

[Corvus Corax · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schon länger kein so belastendes Buch gelesen, aber die Ausführlichkeit der Rekonstruktion verschiedener Ereignisse ist wichtig und die Analyse die Berardi bietet nicht zu verachten.

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing book despite its horrific subject

[Gram · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate you Bifo

[Joel Dagostino · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ebook was recently made free by the publisher Verso and I was intrigued by the title so started reading the first couple of chapters. The initial section devotes each chapter to a well-written factual analysis of a different contemporary case of mass murder. The author offers some insight into the social and economic backdrops to contextualise how modern forms of ultra-violence might be explained.

It was here that I started to get a little lost, with excessive academic jargon that frequently floated, disconnected from any examples or meaning, or definitions. This isn’t necessarily a critique of this particular book, but of academic literature as a whole, that so often becomes inaccessible to readers.

As the author’s arguments develop and detach somewhat from specific case studies, the chapters become clunky, cobbled together and closes with what felt like a collection of irrelevant essays rather than a cohesive argument. The last two chapters deal with a first person account of a work visit to South Korea, before ending with a didactic ‘call-to-arms’ that didn’t really say a huge amount other than detail the plot of the film Take Shelter which it uses as a perplexing metaphor.

Having said that, I enjoyed the book and found it very informative. There is a great deal of emphasise placed on financial capitalism and the erosion of freedom through ownership of worker’s time which was eloquently argued by exploring the thread that runs from colonial brutality right through to late-stage capitalism. Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi makes some powerful arguments, but it is mixed with some confusing and seemingly irrelevant asides along the way.

[Melinda]

Ok, so this is not exactly light reading but it's a fascinating, probing and disturbing treatise on every horrendous psychopathic mass murderer and spectacle suicide [p]act in the past 50 years you care to think of. Includes some revealing facts on pact suicides and the terrifying results of abandoning workers rights and killing off individual rights in neoliberal economic business models around the world. Japan, Indonesia, France and Norway all featured.

[Martin Hare Michno · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content is bleak and tough to swallow. Berardi confronts illogical and incomprehensible mass-shootings and mass-suicides, and finds their root of cause deeply entrenched in our neoliberal reality. Berardi re-politicises our global nihilism by linking it to the senselessness and precariousness of deterritorialised semio-capitalism, and in that sense I think it's a good follow-up to Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism.

[Polly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dark book hiding tiny, shimmering bits of hope.

[drugstorecowgirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

stomach hurts. this was most definitely a good read.

“Do not take part in the game, do not expect any solution from politics, do not be attached to things, do not hope.”

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

i would give this three stars except bifo is addicted to my absolute least favorite kind of analysis -- using etymology to explain political theory .... more thoughts to come

[Fuat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, insightful, engaging.

Abandon all hope.

What?

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I have read all year

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, thought-provoking book. But what is to be done?
"Now, it is finally crystal clear: resistance is over. Capitalist absolution will not be defeated and democracy will never be reinstated. That game is over."

What does Berardi see coming?

"I think the next gane will be about neuro-plasticity. Mapping the activity of the brain is going to be the main task of science in the next decades, while wiring the activity of the collective brain will be the main task of technology...Cognitive workers-particularly scientists, artists and engineers-will be the prime actors in this new game. In the meantime, we have to draw the lines of a new ethics in order to be able to retain our humanity in the course of the trans-human transition."

Let that sink in. The trans-human transition.

"Will the general intellect will be permanently codified by the matrix and turned into a networked swarm, or will the general intellect be able to re-conjoin with its social body, and create the conditions for autonomy and independence from the matrix?"

Our brains are being uploaded to "the cloud." What happens to us?
As Berardi asks, what can be done when nothing can be done?

"Do not belong. Distinguish your destiny from the destiny of those who want to belong and to participate and to pay their debt. If they want war, be a deserter. If they are enslaved but want you to suffer like them, do not give in to their blackmail.
"If you have to choose between death and slavery, don't be a slave. You have some chance to survive. If you accept slavery, you will die sooner or later anyway. As a slave.
"You will die anyway; it is not particularly important when. What is important is how you live your life."