Freedom In the Age of Coronavirus (Update)

Illustration by Jonathan McHugh (2021) 

beepencil.com

 

Well, how are you enjoying your newly returned freedom post-June 21st? Doesn't feel much like freedom in the old (pre-pandemic) sense, does it? 

 

Even the fully vaccinated who have been jabbed three times (because, who knows, maybe the third time will work like a charm) are still expected to wear masks on public transport, take endless tests for viral infection, and (in parts of the UK) flash Covid passes to gain access to certain venues and services. 

 

And hanging over us all is the threat of what the government calls Plan B - the most sinister plan since Plan 9 was devised in fiendish extraterrestrial minds - involving another Christmas lockdown.  

 

I'm beginning to think that Byung-Chul Han is right to argue that we are living in a peculiar phase of history when our ideal of freedom is paradoxically generating new and unlimited forms of compulsion and constraint:

 

"Freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude. Freedom is felt when passing from one way of living to another - until this too turns out to be a form of coercion. Then, liberation gives way to renewed subjugation." [1] 

As a matter of fact, I didn't need Han to tell me this; D. H. Lawrence was already exposing the Fata Morgana of Liberty a hundred years ago: "She may lead you very definitely away from today's prison. But she also very definitely leads you towards some other prison. Liberty is a changing of prisons [...]". [2]

 

Of course, Lawrence was never very keen on freedom (in a liberal, individual sense), being more concerned with belonging and fulfilment (in a religious sense), as is clear from the following lines: 

      

"Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealised purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. [...]

      Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes." [3] 

 

I have to admit, I'm uncomfortable with the language Lawrence uses here and prefer to think of freedom precisely in the (nomadic) terms he rejects; as straying and breaking away from all bonds, homelands, and forms of authority. 

 

Interestingly, however, Byung-Chul Han also stresses that freedom is ultimately relational; something which involves being among friends [4]. He writes: "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." [5]   

Ultimately, we have to ask in closing whether men and women have ever really had the courage for freedom: didn't we invent the Covid-19 pandemic for the same reason we once invented God ...? And don't we carry smartphones for the same reason we once fiddled with rosary beads; to show our devotion and our obedience to the age in which we live [6].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, trans. Erik Butler, (Verso, 2017), p. 1.

      For Han, psychic maladies such as depression and burnout are "pathological signs that freedom is now switching over into manifold forms of compulsion" [p. 2].     

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence and M. L Skinner, The Boy in the Bush, ed. Paul Eggert, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 37. Thanks to David Brock for reminding me of what Lawrence writes here.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 17-18.   

 

[4] Etymologically, it's true that the words freedom and friendship share a common root in Indo-European languages, so that we might best think freedom as a form of connection to others on the basis of kinship and affection.

 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, p. 3. 

      Han reminds us also that Marx defined freedom "in terms of a successful relationship to others" [3] (i.e., freedom is synonymous with communism and the bourgeois notion of individual freedom merely a ruse of capital). 

      Cf. Nietzsche's conception of freedom in Twilight of the Idols, however, which a libertarian friend of mine loves to quote: "Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself." ['Expeditions of an Untimely Man', §38.]

      For Nietzsche, then, the value of freedom lies not in what it attains for the individual, but in what he or she pays for it - what it costs them. Freedom doesn't make happy - it makes strong and marks an overcoming of self-contempt. The free spirit spurns the contemptible sort of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, etc. and they learn not merey how to love their enemies, but hate their friends.

 

[6] Byung-Chul Han writes: 

      "Every [...] technique of domination brings forth characteristic devotional objects that are employed in order to subjugate. Such objects materialize and stabilize dominion. Devotion and related words mean 'submission', or 'obedience'. Smartphones represent digital devotion - indeed, they are the devotional objects of the Digital, period. As a subjectivation-apparatus, the smartphone works like a rosary [...] Both the smartphone and the rosary serve the purpose of self-monitoring and control."

      Psychopolitics, p. 12.    

            

 

To read the earlier post on the subject of freedom for which this forms an update, click here.

Reflections on The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 3: From The Society of Information to The Society of Control)

ITMA: Byung-Chul Han

 

 

IV.

The Information Society

It could be argued that philosophy begins and ends in Plato's Cave. At any rate, that's where we find ourselves once again in chapter 7 of The Transparency Society [a] ...

 

Upon inspection, Byung-Chul Han decides Plato's cave is constructed as a kind of shadow theatre, in which even the objects casting shadows are not real things as such, but merely "theatrical figures and props" [37]. Real things and their shadows exist only outside of the cave, in the world of natural light (i.e., the medium of truth).

 

Interestingly, Han suggests:

 

"Plato's allegory does not represent different modes of cognition, as his interpreters commonly claim; rather, it represents different ways of living, that is, narrative and cognitive modes of existence. [...] In the allegory of the cave, the theatre as a world of narration stands opposed to the world of insight." [38]

 

You might think that Han would, as a philosopher, opt for the latter; but he seems to favour sitting by an artificial fire enjoying scenic illusions and spinning tales of his own. "The light of truth", he says, "denarrativizes the world" [38] and annihilates the play of appearances. And that's why the society of transparency - like Plato's Republic - "is a society without poets, without seduction or metamorphosis" [39].    

 

Han - as a Heideggerian - has a soft-spot for poets: "After all, it is the poet who produces scenic illusions , forms of appearance, and ritual and ceremonial signs; he sets artifacts and antifacts against hyperreal, naked evidence." [39] 

 

Having said that, Han is not entirely pro-darkness and anti-light - and he doesn't think these things separately: "Light and darkness are coeval. Light and shadow belong together. [...] The light of reason and the darkness of the irrational [...] bring each other forth." [39] 

 

And for Han, the transparency society (in contrast to Plato's world), "lacks divine light inhabited by metaphysical tension" [39]. He continues:

"The society of transparency is see-through [...] It is not illuminated by light that streams from a transcendent source. [...] The medium of transparency is not light, but rather lightless radiation; instead of illuminating, it suffuses everything and makes it see-through. In contrast to light, it is penetrating and intrusive. Moreover, its effect is homogenizing and leveling, whereas metaphysical light generates hierarchies and distinctions; thereby it creates order and points of orientation." [39]

The society of transparency may not wish to create order in the sense that Han thinks it here - but it certainly likes to generate (and accumulate) masses of information and innumerable images [b]. Why? Because, says Han, it wishes to disguise its own emptiness.

 

Unfortunately, all the information and imagery in the world doesn't prevent the growing void at the heart of our world ... 

 

The Society of Unveiling

 

"In a certain sense, the eighteenth century was not entirely unlike the present. It already knew the pathos of unveiling and transparency." [42] 

 

For it was, after all, the century of Rousseau, author of Les Confessions and one of the central figures within the Age of Enlightenment. Rousseau it is, who calls upon all men to unveil themselves, in the sincere belief that truth loves to go naked [c]. 

 

Thus whilst the eighteenth century was still a theatrum mundi - full of scenes, masks, and figures - "Rousseau's demand for transparency announces a paradigm shift" [43]. He explicitly "sets his discourse of the heart and truth against the play of masks and roles" [43] and "vehemently criticizes the plan to erect a theatre in Geneva" [43], on the grounds that it will be a "site of disguise, appearance, and seduction lacking all transparency" [43-44].

 

If, as a Nietzschean, I already had problems with Rousseau, Byung-Chul Han convinces me to despise him still further: 

 

"In Rousseau, one can observe how the morality of total transparency necessarily switches to tyranny. The heroic project of transparency - wanting to tear down veils, bring everything to light, and drive away darkness - leads to violence. The prohibition against the theatre and mimesis, which Plato had already legislated for his ideal city, impresses totalitarian traits on Rousseau's transparent society." [44]

 

In sum: "Rousseau's society of transparency turns out to be a society of total control and surveillance." [44] It differs from our world only in that digital transparency "is not cardiographic but pornographic" [44] and its goal "is not moral purification of the heart, but maximal profit" [44].

The Society of Control

 

The digital panopticon of the 21st-century is fundamentally different to the model designed by the English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham in the 18th-century. For whereas the latter offers perspectival surveillance from a central point, the former offers aperspectival illumination of everyone from everywhere (by anyone). 

Bentham's panopticon is very much a product of disciplinary society. But, as Han has argued throughout his book, this model has given way to the society of transparency and control. Thus we possess a distinct panoptic structure of our own; we call it social media and we all "actively collaborate in its construction and maintenance" [46], surrendering our privacy and making a pornographic spectacle of ourselves:

 

"The society of control achieves perfection when subjects bare themselves not through outer constraint but through self-generated need, that is, when the fear of having to abandon one's private and intimate sphere yields to the need to put oneself on display without shame." [46]

 

We might say that we are enslaved by our own will to exhibitionism and voyeurism. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are lots of techno-utopians ready to celebrate surveillance and advocate the move towards a completely transparent society - Han mentions the work of sci-fi author David Brin, for example [d]. Such totalitarian fantasists are as despicable as Rousseau. 

 

However, Han also worries me when he reads all this as a moral crisis:

 

"Strident calls for transparency point to the simple fact that the moral foundation of society has grown faulty, that moral values such as honesty and uprightness are losing their meaning more and more." [48] 

 

There are no simple facts, and it's shameful for a philosopher to speak of such. What Han offers is a simplistic reading of an increasingly complex world and the very last thing we need is to make a vain attempt to restore (or return to) our moral foundations (or get back to basics). 

 

And, let me add in closing, I prefer the idea of chance gatherings of individuals pursuing a shared interest or clustering around a favourite thing, to a community in the strong sense of the term. Such gatherings may lack spirit and prove incapable of mutual political action, but I don't want to belong to any kind of Gemeinschaft thank you very much and I would remind Han of something Heidegger once wrote:

 

"The much-invoked 'community' still does not guarantee 'truth'; the 'community' can very well go astray and abide in errancy even more and even more obstinately than the individual." [e]   

    

  

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015). I remind readers that all page numbers given in the post are references to this work and that titles given in bold are Han's. 

 

[b] Although Han considers Heidegger's concept of Ge-stell (a way of revealing usually translated as enframing) in order to explain this technological proliferation of data and images, he argues that it is of limited use in describing the transparency society in that it only considers things in terms of power and domination and "does not encompass the forms of positioning that are characteristic of today" [40], such as exhibiting [Aus-Stellen] or putting-on-display [Zur-Schau-Stellen]. Ultimately, today's "multimediated mass of information [and simulacra] present things more as an accumulation [Ge-Menge] than as a 'framing'" [40].

 

[c] For many years, I believed that the line: "Craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked" was one of Rousseau's (and I'm pretty sure I was told this by Malcolm McLaren). But it seems that credit should actually be given to the British physician and author Thomas Fuller (1654-1734). See his work of 1732, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings ...

[d] See David Brin's non-fictional work, The Transparent Society, (Perseus Books, 1998).  

[e] Martin Heidegger, 'Ponderings and Intimations III', 153, in Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 127.

 

To read part one of this post, click here.

 

To read part two of this post, click here. 

 

 

Reflections on The Tranparency Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2: From The Society of Pornography to The Society of Intimacy)

David Spriggs: Transparency Report (2014)

davidspriggs.art

 

 

 

III. 

The Society of Pornography

If we must engage in aesthetics, then it's legitimate to point out that transparency "is not the medium of the beautiful" [a] and remind ourselves of Benjamin's argument that beauty requires "what conceals and what is concealed to be inextricably joined" [21]. 

 

In other words, "The beautiful is neither the veil nor the veiled object but rather the object in its veil." [b]

 

This means, somewhat ironically, that beauty can never be revealed or seen; that like truth, beauty hates to go naked: in fact, naked beauty, like the naked truth, does not exist. Having said that, Benjamin thinks the naked human body sublime - i.e., beautiful beyond all beauty and exceeding representation. 

 

But that doesn't hold true it seems for the naked human bodies within pornography: Han is quick to emphasise that the miserable body revealed in pornography may have exhibition value as a piece of flesh, but is lacking in all sublimity: "It is precisely exhibition that destroys creaturely sublimity." [22]

 

The pornographic body is obscene because it lacks grace. But - even if true - we might ask, so what? We admire the graceful movements and gestures of the ballet dancer or gymnast, but why should we expect such (or desire such) from the pornographic model or prostitute? 

 

I tend to agree with Giorgio Agamben, who maintains that "exhibition affords a prime opportunity for a nudity to emerge" [23] that is free of theo-aesthetic value and which, having become transparent, has a singular appeal (or unique allure) [c]. 

 

The girl posing pornographically online doesn't want you to admire her beauty with cool detachment as she exposes her gaping cunt (she's indifferent to your immaculate appreciation); she wants you to jerk off. Porn is a shameless incitement to masturbation, not contemplation [d]. 

 

Han might not like this, but to complain that porn is graceless - or disgraceful - seems to miss the point and all he's doing (apart from revive religious language) is reinstate the "essential difference between the erotic and pornographic" [25]. And that, like all such metaphysical binaries, is philosophically untenable (not to mention a form of violence).   

 

As to whether capitalism "heightens the pornographication of society by exhibiting everthing as a commodity and handing it over to hypervisibility" [24], well, that's another matter. I suspect it probably does and, in as much as it does, Han is justified in borrowing the old Situationist term to describe today's society as "a society of the spectacle" [28].

      

  

The Society of Acceleration

 

Pure movement, which "accelerates just for its own sake" [29] and is going nowhere fast, is something else that Han finds obscene: "it no longer really moves anything or anywhere, and it does not really bring about anything" [29]. 

 

He prefers, in contrast, those narrative processes that elude acceleration and structure time in a meaningful manner; rituals and ceremonies: 

 

"Rituals and ceremonies have their own temporality, their own rhythm and tact. The society of transparency abolishes all rituals and ceremonies becase they do not admit operationalization; that is, they impede the accelerated circulation of information, communication, and production." [30]

The result of this abolition is that our world is uneventful, in the philosophical sense of that term; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

 

Also, we are no longer able to linger in attentiveness (or dwell in peace); no longer able to live the vita contemplativa. The pilgrim is replaced by the tourist, who never really arrives anywhere or finds what they're looking for:

 

"The pilgrimage is a narrative event. For this reason, the itinerary is not a passage to be traversed as quickly as possible, but a path rich in significance. Being underway is charged with meanings such as atonement, healing, or thanksgiving. Because of this narrativity, pilgrimage cannot be accelerated." [31]

 

Han continues: 

 

"In terms of temporality, the pilgrim is on the way to a future in which well-being or salvation [ein Heil] is expected. For this reason, he is not a tourist. The tourist sticks to the present, stays in the here-and-now. He is not underway in the proper sense. The way he travels holds no significance [...] The tourist knows nothing of the rich significance, the narrativity, of the way." [31]     

No surprises to learn that Byung-Chul Han studied Catholic theology and wrote his doctoral dissertation on Heidegger. Nor to discover the same kind of prejudice when discussing tourism that his attitude to porn betrays [e]. I suspect his real objection to contemporary society is the fact that it's secular in character and that when he uses the word obscene he essentially means profane. 

 

And when he says that compulsive transparency "annihilates the fragrance of things" [32], I'm guessing the fragrance he has in mind is a mix of benzoin, frankincense, and myrrh ...

 

Han concludes this chapter:  

 

"The crisis of our times is not acceleration, but rather the scattering and dissociation of temporality. Temporal dis-synchrony makes time buzz without direction and disintegrate into a mere series of  punctual, atomized presences. Thereby, time becomes additive and is emptied of all narrativity." [32-33]

 

So what's the solution? Not deceleration, since acceleration per se is not the actual problem. I think, for Han - as for Heidegger - the answer is: Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten ... [f]     

 

The Society of Intimacy

 

Whilst 18th-century society was theatrical in character, ours, in contrast, is far more intimate, as we abandon distance for immediacy and symbolic representation yields to pornographic exhibition. People don't want to play clearly defined social roles, they wish to strive for authenticity:

 

"Intimacy is the psychological formula of transparency. One believes that one attains transparency of the soul by revealing intimate feelings and emotions, by laying the soul bare." [35] 

And where does one commit this soul baring? Not in the confessional, or in a potentially hostile public space, but on social media, which sets up a virtual space of absolute closeness and closedness; "the outside has been eliminated" [35]. 

 

One can at last be perfectly safe and perfectly alone with oneself: 

 

"This digital vicinity [Nachbarschaft] offers users only sectors of the world that please them. In this fashion, it dismantles the public sphere [Öffentlichkeit] - indeed, it dismantles public, critical consciousness - and it privitizes the world." [35]  

 

We have been transformed into digital narcissists who prefer to encounter ourselves everywhere, rather than the stranger, or Other, who just might help us escape from the hell of the Same ...      

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015). Future page references will be given in the post itself. I would remind readers that the chapter titles given in bold are Han's. Part one of this post, which discusses the first three chapters (and preface), can be read by clicking here. 

 

[b] Walter Benjamin, 'Goethe's Elective Affinities', Selected Writings 1913-1926, Vol. I, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael. W. Jennings, (Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 351. Quoted by Han on p. 21 of The Transparency Society. 

[c] See Giorgio Agamben, Nudities, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella, (Stanford University Press, 2010). Byung-Chul Han quotes fairly extensively from this work, even though he disagrees with what Agamben writes.

[d] D. H. Lawrence also pointed this out: "The pornography of today [...] is an invariable stimulant to the vice of self abuse; onanism, masturbation, call it what you will. In young or old, man or woman, boy or girl, modern pornography is a direct provocative of masturbation." See 'Pornography and Obscenity', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 244.

  

[e] This snobbish disdain for numerous aspects of popular culture - from tinned food to tourism; newspapers to cinema - was common amongst modernist writers in the twentieth-century - from D. H. Lawrence to T. S. Eliot; Theodor Adorno to Martin Heidegger. Although there are some deeply stupid opinions expressed in John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (Faber and Faber, 1992), it remains one of the go-to books on this subject. 

[f] This phrase - Only a God Can Save Us - is the title of an interview given by Martin Heidegger to Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff, published in Der Spiegel magazine on September 23, 1966. 

 

This post continues and concludes in part three: click here. 

 

 

Reflections on The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From The Society of Positivity to The Society of Evidence)

Stanford University Press (2015)

 

 

I. 

 

I might not share Byung-Chul Han's political views, but I certainly share many of his influences and points of reference; Nietzsche, Barthes, and Baudrillard, for example, all of whom feature in this essay on an ideal that has become central to public discourse in the 21st-century and which functions as one of the most pernicious of our contemporary mythologies. 

 

As Han notes in his preface, today the term transparency "is haunting all spheres of life" [a]. People operating in the social sector, science, business, politics, and the media, all pride themselves on their openness and insist they have nothing to hide; that they are fully accountable.    

But Han sees through this neoliberal (and porno-utopian) fantasy of the Transparenzgesellschaft and indicates the dangers of losing mystery, shadow, and privacy. According to Han - and as we will discuss below - the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other (older) social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust. 

 

Ultimately, more information does not mean more freedom, it means greater control, and as "total communication and total networking run their course, it proves harder than ever to be an outsider, to hold a different opinion" [vii]; consensus and conformity are two key terms within this new order of transparency. When everything and everyone is coordinated on Facebook then, as Jello Biafra predicted long ago, it's California über alles ... [b]

 

 

II.

 

The Society of Positivity

 

Although totalised transparency will ultimately result in terror, the society of transparency ironically manifests itself "first and foremost as a society of positivity" [1]. 

 

We used to think that the smiling face of the politician or salesman was just a mask, behind which lay the ugly reality. But now we know that the smiling face is the truth - just as we have come to understand that the phrase have a nice day is a moral imperative. For fascism not only compels speech, as Barthes pointed out [c], it demands active participatation 24/7. 

 

Whoever optimistically thinks woke liberalism will lead in all its positivity to a better world, has failed to understand the significance of the sign above the gates to Hell which reads: Built in the name of Love [d]. 

 

Similarly, as Han writes:

 

"Whoever connects transparency only with corruption and the freedom of information has failed to recognize its scope. Transparency is a systemic compulsion gripping all social processes and subjecting them to deep-reaching change. [...] This systemic compulsion makes the society of transparency a calibrated society. Herein lies its totalitarian trait: 'New word for Gleichschaltung: Transparency.'" [2]

Han is quoting the German writer Ulrich Schacht here [e]. Later, he quotes Baudrillard in order to provide the following memorable definition: "The society of positivity is dominated by the 'transparency and obscenity of information in a universe emptied of event'." [2] [f]  

 

A universe emptied of event - i.e., one in which there is no possibility of a new world erupting within the known world - is also a universe devoid of Otherness and singularity; what Han - again borrowing from Baudrillard - calls the hell of the Same. 

 

Now, clearly, sometimes the human soul needs sameness (stability, predicability, etc.), "where it can be at home without the gaze of the Other" [3] and not swept up in perpetual chaos. But this is not an argument for the elimination of all difference and becoming. 

 

Similarly, whilst a cerain amount of openness and transparency is healthy, the idea of "completely surrendering the private sphere" [3] is naive and misaken. Ultimately, "human existence is not transparent, even to itself" [3]. To put this in psychoanalytic terms, the id remains largely hidden to the ego:

 

"Therefore, a rift runs through the human psyche and prevents the ego from agreeing even with itself. This fundamental rift renders self-transparency impossible. A rift also gapes between people. For this reason interpersonal transparency proves impossible to achieve. [...] The other's very lack of transparency is what keeps the relationship alive." [3]

 

Compulsive transparency in the name of ideological positivity and a will to knowledge, lacks a sensitivity to the import of secrecy and for what Nietzsche termed the pathos of distance. The attempt to illuminate (and expose) everything and everyone under the same bright searchlight, "only makes the world more shameless and more naked" [4].  

In sum: we require a little negativity, a little shadow, even a little corruption in all spheres; negative thoughts and feelings - somewhat paradoxicaly - make happy and keep sane. An excess of positivity ends in exhaustion and depression. Click the like button if you agree ...

 

The Society of Exhibition

How do you know a sacred object when you see one? It's always hidden from view; the holy is not transparent. It's value depends upon its actual existence rather than its exhibition; the fact that it is what it is, even if it is withdrawn and separated off.

 

Within the society of positivity, however, seeing is believing; "things become commodities, they must be displayed in order to be; cult value disappears in favour of exhibition value" [9]. But this compulsion for display "that hands everything over to visibility" [9] results in objects losing their aura, defined by Walter Benjamin as a thing's unique existence within time and space [g]. 

 

This holds true for people too - and the human countenance ... 

 

If the last trace of aura can be found in a beautiful old photograph, digital technology assures "that the 'human countenance' has become a mere face that equals only its exhibition value" [10] on social media. All imperfections and blemishes and signs of aging are removed [h], even though it's these things that make us unique; the negativity of time, for example, playing a constitutive role. 

 

Transparency desires perfection, but it doesn't allow for transcendence. And digital photography is transparent photography: "without birth or death, without destiny or event" [11], says Han. However, whilst I understand the argument he's making (borrowed from Heidegger, Benjamin, and Barthes), I'm not sure I agree with it. 

 

Or rather, even if it's true, I'm not sure I care, as I like the pictures taken with my i-Phone; even if - or perhaps precisely because - they lack "semantic and temporal density" [11]. Not every image needs to be meaningful or mournful; nostalgic or romantic. 

 

And just because images are digitally reworked and circulated on social media, that doesn't necessarily mean they are obscene [i], or that the objects made visible have had their inherent nature compromised. I tend to agree with Graham Harman, objects cannot be exhausted by their relations with other objects - including a human being with a camera - meaning that they retain an excessive reality that is always unseen, unknown, withdrawn.  

 

And whilst the exhibiting and exploiting of bare life is pornography to one man, it's the laughter of genius to another [j] ...

 

 

The Society of Evidence  

This opening paragraph could have come from my Illicit Lover's Discourse (2010): 

"The society of transparency is hostile to pleasure. Within the economy of human desire, pleasure and transparency do not fit to gether. Transparency is foreign to libidinal economy. Precisely the negativity of the secret, the veil, and concealment incite desire and make pleasure more intense. That is why the seducer plays with masks, illusion, and appearances." [15]

In some ways, I still agree with this and feel sympathetic; I like Baudrillard's suggestion that after the orgy comes the masked ball. And Han is right, I think, to insist that transparency spells the end of erotic fantasy and results in the pornification of society.

 

On the other hand, however, all that talk of desire and libidinal economy, etc. makes me feel a bit weary and as if I've travelled back in time. One of the reasons I decided to read Byun-Chul Han's work was because I wanted to see what a celebrated 21st-century philosopher had to say and I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed - despite its brilliance - to basically find a reworking of all the usual suspects (authors one read twenty or thirty years ago).      

 

Still, just like the famous Icelander Magnus Magnusson, having started this examination of Han's text, I'll finish it and readers may join me in part two of this post by clicking here (or, if they wish, leap ahead straight to part three by clicking here). 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015), p. vii. Future page references will be given directly in the post. Note also that the chapter titles given in bold are taken from the essay itself and are not of my invention. 

      The book was originally published in Germany as Transparenzgesellschaft, (Matthes & Seitz Verlag, 2012).  

 

[b] Jello Biafra was lead vocalist with the American punk band the Dead Kennedy's. 'California Über Alles' was their debut single (released June 1979). It was re-recorded for the album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (Cherry Red / Alternative Tentacles, 1980): click here for this later (faster) version. It describes the triumph of soft fascism which, arguably, the transparency society is in the process of realising.  

 

[c] See Roland Barthes, 'Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France', (January 7, 1977), trans. Richard Howard, in A Roland Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag, (Vintage, 1993), pp. 457-78.   

 

[d] See Dante's Inferno, III, 5-6. 

      Note that Nietzsche famously describes this as a naive error on Dante's part, however, and says that it would have been more telling if he'd placed a sign above the Christian Paradise reading: 'Eternal hate created me as well'. See On the Genealogy of Morality, I. 15.

 

[e] See Ulrich Schacht, Über Schnee und Geschichte, (Matthes & Seitz, 2012), journal entry for June 23, 2011.  

[f] Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, trans. Phil Beitchman and W.G.J. Niesluchowski, (Semiotext[e], 2008), p. 45. 

[g] See Benjamin's crucial essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1936). It can be found in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, (Schocken Books, 2007), pp. 217-251.  

[h] Han writes: "Exhibition value above all depends on beautiful looks." [12] 

      Again, maybe that's true, but is that the worst thing in the world? The ancient Greeks also valued good looks, believing such to not only show that they were blessed by the gods, but possessed of a beautiful soul. They even had a phrase for someone who was both attractive and virtuous: kalos kagathos [καλὸς κἀγαθός]. I'm always a bit suspicious of those who seem to sneer at physical beauty, though I assume that Han is here talking about a fixed ideal of beauty based on stereotypical attributes and lacking any complexity or mystery.  

 

[i] Byung-Chul Han is borrowing the term obscene from Baudrillard, who defines it in Fatal Strategies as the "more visible than visible" [p. 30]. I don't disagree that hypervisibility, in as much as it lacks and challenges the negativity of what is hidden and kept secret, is obscene, but I don't think that obscenity ever truly prevents the object from dwelling in peace. For as I go on to say in the post, objects always find a way to elude us and retain their darkness.   

 

[j] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence in 'Pornography and Obscenity', see Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 236. My italics. I'll return to Han's thoughts on porn when I discuss chapter 4 of his book. See also the post on The Agony of Eros (2017): click here. 

On the Feline Negation of Otherness

Selfie with Cat (01-01-20)

 

I. 

 

Many thinkers in various disciplines, including philosophy, like to affirm a notion of otherness - or radical alterity, as Baudrillard describes it. 

 

In other words, they wish to acknowledge the Other in all its difference and dissimilarity; as the alien non-self, which challenges the notion of a unified and universal identity and/or models of insular cultural narcissism based on such an ideal.   

 

The ethical proposition is that the Other is both prior and in some sense preferable to the self-same; a transcendent element whose loss seriously impoverishes the world. 

 

But my cat isn't having any of this; she happily attempts to negate the otherness of the world around her and make all things familiar and smell the Same. And she does this by scent marking ...       

 

 

II.

  

Encountering any new object in her environment, Cat will immediately mark it with her scent and, in doing so, she's not not simply declaring her own presence, but, as I say, nullifying otherness. In other words, by rubbing up against something she effecively rubs it out; it's a form of erasure more than self-expression.  

 

I like to think, of course, that when she jumps up on the desk and rubs her face against mine, she's being affectionate and that this is a form of social bonding, etc. But I'm also aware that she's attempting to rid me of my human stench (my odoriferous otherness), so that she can just about tolerate my presence in the room.

 

 

And Fungal Life Shall Triumph

And Fungal Life Shall Triumph

(SA/2021)

 

 

To be honest, I draw no inspiration whatsoever from COP26: both delegates and protestors leave me equally disdainful and remind me to renew my membership of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT).   

 

Phallic-shaped mushrooms growing through my neighbour's driveway, however, bring tremendous cheer and fill me with the hope that life will ultimately triumph over concrete, tarmac, and asphalt. 

 

For as Lawrence wrote, whilst brute force crushes many plants, they always rise again: "The pyramids will not last a moment, compared with the daisy."*

 

And my neighbour's attempt to create a perfectly barren space in which to park his big black shiny car, will be in vain thanks to some rapidly growing toadstools.      

  

 

* D. H. Lawrence, Sketches of Etruscan Places, in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta De Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 36.  

 

 

Reflections on The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2: From The Pedagogy of Seeing to Burnout Society)

Byung-Chul Han in the documentary film Müdigkeitsgesellschaft - 

Byung-Chul Han in Seoul/Berlin (dir. Isabella Gresser, 2015) 

Click here to view a trailer, or here to watch the film in full (with English subtitles)

 

 

III. 

 

I believe it was Cato the Elder who said: 

 

'Never is one more active than when doing nothing; never is one less alone than when by one's self.'

 

And I think I know what he means: namely, that the contemplative life - the concept of which was first introduced into philosophy by Aristotle and developed by the Stoics (before being given a Latin twist by Augustine) - is, in terms of Geistigkeit, the most noble form of existence.

 

Anyhoo, let's return to The Burnout Society (2015), in which Byung-Chul Han gives his interpretation of Cato's dictum. I remind readers that the titles given in bold are Han's own and that page numbers refer to the English edition of the text, translated by Erik Butler and published by the MIT Press.

  

    

IV.

 

The Pedagogy of Seeing

 

Returning to the theme of vita contemplativa, Byung-Chul Han calls on Nietzsche who knew a thing or two about the importance of developing a way of life in which one learns to ignore distractions and resist stimuli. For when one reacts immediately and surrenders to every impulse, one is not only behaving in a vulgar manner, but displaying symptoms of spiritual exhaustion.   

 

However, it's important to note that the vita contemplativa "is not a matter of passive affirmation and being open to whatever happens" [21]; instead, it "offers resistance to crowding, intrusive stimuli" [21]. 

 

In other words, the contemplative life is a sovereign manner of saying No to the world [a]; an active negation of the negative by preferring not to, as Bartleby would have it [b].

 

It's also important to note that it's "an illusion to believe that being more active means being freer" [22]. You're not free if you are obeying every impulse or external stimulus and lack what Nietzsche terms the excluding instincts, without which "action scatters into restless, hyperactive reaction and abreaction" [22]. 

 

It's important to know how to pause and delay; only the machine grinds endlessly on and on and, despite its enormous power, the computer or iPhone is not intelligent; in fact, says Han, it's just a stupid mechanical device insofar as it lacks the ability to daydream.  

 

Perhaps because we can't say No, we are also losing the capacity for rage, a powerful emotion which, according to Han, "puts the present as a whole into question" [22] and is as different from anger as fear is from angst. 

 

In brief, increasing positivization denies all negative energy (evil). And that's a concern, because, as Hegel argued, "negativity is precisely what keeps existence [Dasein] alive" [24]. Or, as Zarathustra says: Man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him. 

 

 

The Bartleby Case

 

I used to hate Melville's Bartleby - as this post from 31 Jan 2013 demonstrates. But I've since changed my mind and now have a greater appreciation for his tale. Indeed, Bartleby's signature phrase, I prefer not to, has even become one of the unofficial slogans of Torpedo the Ark (along with curb your enthusiasm and never trust a hippie). 

 

Han offers us what he terms a pathological reading of the story (rather than a metaphysical or theological interpretation) in relation to his own theories of exhaustion and neurotic hyperactivity. He reads Bartleby's silence and immobility as "symptoms characteristic of neurasthenia" [25] and doesn't much care for the character: "his signature phrase [...] expresses neither the negative potency of not-to nor the instinct for delay and deferral that is essential for 'spirituality'" [25-26].     

 

Of course, Bartleby is still an obedience-subject belonging to disciplinary society (Melville publised the story in 1853), so although he dies in complete isolation, he doesn't develop the symptoms of depression which are the hallmark of our society:   

 

"Feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, or fear of failure do not belong to Bartleby's emotional household. Constant self-reproach and self-aggression are unknown to him. He does not face the imperative to be himself that characterizes late-modern achievement society." [26]

 

Ontotheological interpretations of the Bartleby case - like Giorgio Agamben's - are ultimately compromised by their failure to "take note of the change of mental structure [psychischer Strukturwandel] in the present day" [26] [c]. 

 

Further, in a simlar manner to Deleuze, Agamben "elevates Bartleby to a metaphysical position of the highest potency" [27], and it was this giving him angelic or even Christ-like status that used to irritate me also. 

 

Still, whilst I would prefer not to see him in a messianic light, I do think that Bartleby's tale is more than merely a story of exhaustion (it's also a tale of seduction, for example, in which the object extracts its revenge).           

 

 

The Society of Tiredness

 

In order to improve performance and maximise achievement, says Han, we are increasingly relying upon neuro-enhancing drugs and energy drinks. The ironic result: we are generating ever greater levels of fatigue: "The excessiveness of performance enhancement leads to psychic infarctions." [31] 

 

And this can't be good - certainly not if it leads to not only feeling physically exhausted, but mentally tired of everyone and everything. For tiredness of the latter kind leaves us feeling separate and isolated. 

 

If only there could be a shared tiredness; one in which we are not tired of others, but with others; one that brings us back into touch; one that lies beyond exhaustion. Han calls this a tiredness of negative potency. If only we had the chance, at least for one day a week, to just log off and rest; if only we could re-establish the Sabbath (a day of not-doing) and counter the machine-ideal of 24/7.

O for the boredom of a childhood Sunday!

Burnout Society

For Byung-Chul Han, both Kantian and Freudian models of the self are now untenable. 

 

Kant's moral subject who obeys his conscience and wishes to fulfil his duty, has, for example, been replaced by the late-modern achievement subject who has no interest in obedience to the moral law within or any sense of obligation.    

 

Psychoanalysis - a theory designed for a repressive age - is also outmoded:

 

"The Freudian unconscious is not a formation that exists outside of time. It is a product of the disciplinary society, dominated by the negativity of prohibitions and repression, that we have long since left behind." [36]. 

It may still be instructive (and important) to read Kant and Freud - and Han has clearly read a good deal of both authors - but they tell us about passed forms of self and society, not present forms. 

 

But then that could be said of pretty much every author writing before the digital age of information-technology and social media. It's not simply that their thinking is antiquated, but that they have too much character [d], which is why so many young people find them offensive and so many old works - once regarded as classics - now come with trigger warnings.

We need people with character; people who still possess an awareness of Otherness and haven't fallen into solipsism and narcissism; people who can still love and mourn and experience a range of psychic states born of negativity; people who still listen to the voice of their daimon; people who refuse to be hyperactive self-exploiting Letzter Menschen whom Han thinks of as zombies: "too alive to die, and too dead to live" [51].   

Notes

 

[a] In an early post on Torpedo the Ark - published 1 August 2014 - I discussed the importance of being able to say no: click here. 

 

[b] Han offers a critical (and clinical) reading of the Bartleby Case in the following chapter. 

[c] Not having read Agamben's take on the Bartleby case, I can't say if this is fair or not. Readers who wish to investigate this matter further can find Agamben's essay, 'Bartleby, or On Contingency', in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, ed. and trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 243-271. 

 

[d] As Han reminds us, for Freud, character "is a phenomenon of negativity" [40] - and thus problematic within an age of woke. Today, speakers with character are accused of hate speech and being no platformed across university campuses by those who demand moral and political correctness (and positivity) at all times. "Today", writes Han, "violence issues more readily from the conformism of consensus than from the antagonism of dissent." [48] 

 

 

To read part one of this post on The Burnout Society, click here.       

Reflections on The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From Neuronal Power to Vita Activa)

Stanford University Press (2015)

 

 

I. 

 

Many years ago, I wrote a short novel that dealt with existential themes of boredom, fatigue, world-weariness, etc. It was called Exhaustion and the first line read:  'Ours is essentially a fagged-out age, so ... Oh fuck it, who cares? I can't be bothered to write any more.' 

 

As a matter of fact, that was also the last line.    

 

Anyway, this is only coincidently relevant to Byung-Chul Han's essay The Burnout Society [a] and it's his work which I would like to discuss here ... 

II.

 

Neuronal Power

 

"Every age has its signature afflictions." [1] 

 

That's a great opening line, I think. Unfortunately, what follows now seems amusingly naive and dated: 

 

"Despite fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons." [1]

 

I suppose, writing in 2010, Han wasn't to know what 2019 would bring; although some might say that as a theorist and commentator who draws on literature, philosophy, and both the social and natural sciences, it's his job to anticipate possibilities in the foreseeable future and not just rehash ideas from the past.

 

That seems a bit harsh, however, so let's just overlook the above and concede that neurological conditions - including depression, personality disorder, and burnout syndrome - also play a significant role in life today. 

 

These are not viral infections, but infarctions, says Han, that result from "an excess of positivity" [1]. He continues: "The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts."

 

We have, if you like, been sent mad with fatigue by our own 24/7 lifestyles (lived increasingly online), in which all Otherness is exorcised. And because Otherness is disappearing, "we live in a time that is poor in negativity" [4] - even if rich in difference (the form by which the Same likes to disguise itself).    

Beyond Disciplinary Society

Like Baudrillard, Han wants us to forget Foucault - or, at any rate, agree that today's society is no longer the one that Foucault described fifty-years ago. The prisons, asylums, and workhouses, of old have been replaced by fitness studios, fast-food outlets, and shopping malls:

 

"Twenty-first century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also its inhabitants are no longer 'obedience-subjects' but 'achievement-subjects'. They are entrepreneurs of themselves." [8]    

Foucault's theory of power simply cannot account for how things are now, says Han. 

 

However, whilst I agree that the world has changed, it's simply mistaken to say that Foucault's cratology is tied to a negative (or repressive) model of power; the power to prohibit and say No. Foucault explicitly rejects this model and challenges traditional representations in which power is characterised in an exclusively restrictive manner; "poor in resources, sparing of its methods, monotonous in the tactics it utilizes, incapable of invention, and seemingly doomed always to repeat itself" [b]. 

 

Contrary to the above, Foucault offers us a gay, energy-based model of power outside of accepted values and beyond the "negative and emaciated form of prohibition" [c]. This model allows power to produce things - including forms of knowledge - as well as induce pleasures. And so, it explains very well why - as Han later notes - despite there being a paradigm shift from disciplinary society to achievement society, there has been a level of continuity and no real break exists between the modal verbs Should and Can. 

 

In other words, achievement society still has the same network of power running through it as disciplinary society. It's just that whereas the latter required our obedience to authority, the former requires us to show some initiative and be self-motivated and self-expressive - and, above all, achieve - to the point of exhaustion and depression [d].   

 

The contemporary subject is voluntarily self-exploitative; the perfect worker, determined to have a nice day and always wear that happy face (until the crack-up and break down comes due to excessive positivity and compulsive freedom).  

 

 

Profound Boredom

 

"Excessive positivity also expresses iself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically changes the structure and economy of attention. Perception becomes fragmented and scattered." [12]

 

Perhaps this is why Han chooses to publish his work in essay form and to favour short sentences; he's making a somewhat patronising assumption about his reader's ability to concentrate and follow complex arguments at length. 

 

Of course, he might have a point: I know that my own ability to think has flattened over recent years, even as it has broadened and, indeed, accelerated. For Han, this shows regression to animality. For wild animals, he says, are "incapable of contemplative immersion" [12]; they are always alert to what's going on around them and easily distracted [e].               

  

For Han, human regression of this nature is a bad thing. Why? Because we owe the cultural achievements of humanity "to deep, contemplative attention" [13]. Scatty individuals may by good at multitasking and playing video games (not things Han approves of), but they'll never produce great works of art or philosophy. Having a low boredom threshold, makes one incapable of "the profound idleness that benefits the creative process" [13].

Unfortunately, this simply sounds like bourgeois snobbery (even when you call upon Walter Benjamin and Nietzsche for support).

And so, whilst I can certainly see the attractions of the vita contemplativa, I'm not going to knock those for whom such a life would be intolerable, nor denigrate the cognitive abilities (and dancing skills) of animals.      

 

 

Vita Activa

 

One philosopher who wasn't prepared to simply dismiss the via activa as mere restless stupidity, was Hannah Arendt [f]. Particularly if action results in the birth of something new. 

 

Unfortunately, Arendt thinks that modern society - as a society of perfected slavery - "nullifies any possibility for action when it degrades the human being into an animal laborans, a beast of burden" [17], subsumed within the herd. 

 

Byung-Chul Han doesn't buy into this argument, however, and doesn't think Arendt has much to tell us about today's world:

"Arendt's descriptions of the modern animal laborans do not correspond to what we can observe in today's achievement society. The late-modern animal laborans does not give up its individuality or ego in order to merge, through the work it performs, with the anonymous life of the species. Rather, contemporary labour society [...] fosters individuality ... The late-modern animal laborans is equipped with an ego just short of bursting. And it is anything but passive [...] It is hyperactive and hyperneurotic." [17-18]  

 

I suppose that's why Frank Costanza's cry of Serenity now! continues to resonate so powerfully; we all desire a little peace and quiet in our lives [g]. And that perhaps requires learning how to live a little more slowly; Han argues that everything seems sped up and transient today:   

 

"The general denarrativization of the world [following the death of God] is reinforcing the feeling of fleetingness. It makes life bare." [18]

 

Indeed, it makes life so bare, that it's even barer "than the life of homo sacer" [18] [h] - which is really bare! Almost unbearable in its bareness: and yet we seek to preserve ourselves and keep going as long as possible. Han says we are like the Muselmänner, "albeit well fed and probably obese" [19]. 

 

An unpleasant remark on which to close the first part of this post, but Byung-Chul said it, not me ...

Notes

 

[a] I'm reading the English translation by Erik Butler, published by Stanford University Press in 2015, and all page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

      The original German work, entitled Müdigkeitsgesellschaft, was published in Berlin by Matthes & Seitz Verlag, in 2010. Readers will note that the title literally translates as 'Fatigue Society', but I suppose the term burnout - coined in 1970 by the German-born American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger - has greater contemporary resonance. Freudenberger defined burnout as a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by overwork amongst professionals. See his book Burn Out: The High Cost of High Achievement (1980). 

 

[b] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998), p. 85.

 

[c] Ibid., p. 86.

 

[d] It should be noted that unlike French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg, Han doesn't think that depression is simply the pathological expression of an individual's failure to become themselves. He also thinks that it also arises from a lack of attachment [Bindungsarmut] to others within an increasingly fragmented and atomised society: 

      "Ehrenberg lends no attention to this aspect of depression. He also overlooks the systemic violence inhabiting achievement society, which provokes psychic infarctions. It is not the imperative only to belong to oneself, but the pressure to achieve that causes exhaustive depression. Seen in this light, burnout syndrome does not express the exhausted self so much as the exhausted, burnt-out soul. According to Ehrenberg, depression spreads when the commandments and prohibitions of disciplinary society yield to self-responsibility and initiative. In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new commandment of late-modern labour society." [10]

      To be fair, I've not read Ehrenberg's work, so can't say if Han's criticism is justified. Readers who wish to make up their own minds should see The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age, trans. Enrico Caouette et al, (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010).   

[e] I'm not sure about this. It's true, perhaps, that monkey's don't meditate, but I've watched my cat sit for hours staring at the same spot having heard a sound that suggests to her the presence of a small rodent and it seems to me that this might legitimately be described as a form of contemplative immersion. One suspects that Han is guilty of anthropocentric conceit to suggest otherwise and it's worth noting that later in this chapter he writes: "Only human beings can dance" [14], which seems palpably untrue. However, it's also worth noting that - somewhat paradoxically - in the chapter Vita Activa Han refers to the serenity [Gelassenheit] of animals [18], which, he argues, man has lost. 

[f] See The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 1998). This work was first published in 1958, so the fact that parts of its sociological analysis are dated is hardly surprising. 

 

[g] I have written on this desire for serenity in an earlier post on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

[h] Homo sacer, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, refers to an accursed figure, excluded from society because of some trespass, whom any citizen may kill without incurring punishment. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben developed the term within his work, using it to stand for an absolutely expendable life (such as the life of a Jewish inmate in a Nazi concentration camp, for example). See Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford University Press, 1998). 

 

 

To read part two of this post on The Burnout Society, click here.