Byung-Chul Han

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In this Korean name, the family name is Han.
Byung-Chul Han
Social Media
  • Transparency
  • Violence
    • Notable ideas
    		Shanzhai as "Deconstruction in Chinese"
    Korean name
    Hangul
    한병철
    Hanja
    韓炳哲
    Revised RomanizationHan Byeongcheol
    McCune–ReischauerHan Pyŏngchŏl
    IPA/han pjʌŋt͡ɕʰʌl/

    Byung-Chul Han (born 1959) is a South Korean-born

    philosopher and cultural theorist living in Germany.[1] He was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts
    and still occasionally gives courses there.

    Biography

    Byung-Chul Han studied metallurgy at Korea University in Seoul[2] before he moved to Germany in the 1980s to study philosophy, German literature and Catholic theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich. In 1994 he received his doctoral degree at Freiburg with a dissertation on Stimmung, or mood, in Martin Heidegger.[3]

    In 2000, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the

    Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), where he directed the newly established Studium Generale general-studies program.[4]

    Han is the author of more than twenty books, the most well known are treatises on what he terms a "society of tiredness" (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), a "society of transparency" (Transparenzgesellschaft), and the concept of shanzhai (山寨), a style of imitative variation, whose roots are, he argues, intrinsic to Chinese culture, undermine the distinction often drawn between original and fake, and pre-exist practices which in Western philosophy are called deconstructive.

    Han's current work focuses on

    neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.[5][additional citation(s) needed
    ]

    Personal life

    Through his career, Han has refused to give radio and television interviews and rarely divulges any biographical or personal details, including his date of birth, in public.

    Catholic.[7]

    Thought

    Much of Han's writing is characterised by an underlying concern with the situation encountered by human subjects in the fast-paced, technologically-driven state of

    burnout, depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), violence, freedom, technology, and popular culture.[citation needed
    ]

    In The Burnout Society (original German title: Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), Han characterizes today's society as a pathological landscape of neuronal disorders such as

    positivity.[8] According to Han, driven by the demand to persevere and not to fail, as well as by the ambition of efficiency, we become committers and sacrificers at the same time and enter a swirl of demarcation, self-exploitation and collapse. "When production is immaterial, everyone already owns the means of production, him- or herself. The neoliberal system is no longer a class system in the proper sense. It does not consist of classes that display mutual antagonism. This is what accounts for the system's stability."[9]

    Han argues that subjects become self-exploiters: "Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise. People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself."[9] The individual has become what Han calls "the achievement-subject"; the individual does not believe they are subjugated "subjects" but rather "projects: Always refashioning and reinventing ourselves" which "amounts to a form of compulsion and constraint—indeed, to a "more efficient kind of subjectivation and subjugation." As a project deeming itself free of external and alien limitations, the "I" subjugates itself to internal limitations and self-constraints, which are taking the form of compulsive achievement and optimization.[10]

    In Agonie des Eros ('Agony of the Eros') Han carries forward thoughts developed in his earlier books The Burnout Society (German: Müdigkeitsgesellschaft) and Transparency Society (German: Transparenzgesellschaft). Beginning with an analysis of the "Other" Han develops an interrogation of desire and love between human beings. Partly based on Lars von Trier's film Melancholia, where Han sees depression and overcoming depicted, Han further develops his thesis of a contemporary society that is increasingly dominated by narcissism and self-reference. Han's diagnosis extends even to the point of the loss of desire, the disappearance of the ability to devote to the "Other", the stranger, the non-self. At this point, subjects come to revolve exclusively around themselves, unable to build relationships. Even love and sexuality are permeated by this social change: sex and pornography, exhibition/voyeurism and re/presentation, are displacing love, eroticism, and desire from the public eye. The abundance of positivity and self-reference leads to a loss of confrontation. Thinking, Han states, is based on the "untreaded", on the desire for something that one does not yet understand. It is connected to a high degree with Eros, so the "agony of the Eros" is also an "agony of thought". Not everything must be understood and "liked", not everything must be made available.[11]

    In Topologie der Gewalt ('Topology of Violence'), Han continues his analysis of a society on the edge of collapse that he started with The Burnout Society. Focusing on the relation between violence and individuality, he shows that, against the widespread thesis about its disappearance, violence has only changed its form of appearance and now operates more subtly. The material form of violence gives way to a more anonymous, desubjectified, systemic one, that does not reveal itself, as it is merging with its antagonist – freedom. This theme is further explored in "Psychopolitics", where through Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Richard Sennett, René Girard, Giorgio Agamben, Deleuze/Guattari, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Pierre Bourdieu and Martin Heidegger, Han develops an original conception of violence. Central to Han's thesis is the idea that violence finds expression in 'negative' and 'positive' forms (note: these are not normative judgements about the expressions themselves): negative violence is an overtly physical manifestation of violence, finding expression in war, torture, terrorism, etc; positive violence "manifests itself as over-achievement, over-production, over-communication, hyper-attention, and hyperactivity." The violence of positivity, Han warns, could be even more disastrous than that of negativity. "Infection, invasion, and infiltration have given way to infarction."[12]

    Themes

    Han has written on topics such as

    tiredness, transparency and violence
    .

    Reception

    Han being awarded the Prix Bristol des Lumières [fr] alongside Jacques Attali, Christophe Barbier, Philippe-Joseph Salazar, among others

    The Burnout Society will soon be available in 19 languages.[13] Several South Korean newspapers voted it the most important book in 2012.[14] It sold over a hundred thousand copies across Latin America, Korea, and Spain.[15]The Guardian wrote a positive review of his 2017 book Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power,[16] while the Hong Kong Review of Books praised his writing as "concise almost to the point of being aphoristic, Han's writing style manages to distill complex ideas into highly readable and persuasive prose" while noting that "on other occasions, Han veers uncomfortably close to billboard-sized statements ("Neoliberalism is the 'capitalism of' Like), which highlights the fine line between cleverness and self-indulgent sloganeering."[17] The Los Angeles Review of Books described him as "as good a candidate as any for philosopher of the moment."[18]

    Der Freitag writer Steffen Kraft criticized him for drawing on anti-democratic and anti-technology philosopher Carl Schmitt, and alleged that he "confuses cause and effect: it is not the hope for more transparency that has turned democracy into technocracy, but the refusal of even progressives to consider the consequences of information technology on the political process." (original quote in German: "Ursache und Wirkung: Nicht die Hoffnung auf mehr Transparenz hat die Demokratie zur Technokratie gemacht, sondern die Weigerung selbst Progressiver, die Folgen der Informationstechnik auf den politischen Prozess zu bedenken.")[5]

    Works in English

    References

    1. ISSN 0174-4909
      . Retrieved 2022-03-18.
    2. ^ "[책과 지식] 『피로사회』 저자 한병철, 도올 김용옥 만나다" [(Books and knowledge) 'Society of Tiredness' author Han Byung-Chul and Do-ol Kim Young-oak meet]. JoongAng Ilbo. 24 March 2013. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
    3. ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2017-09-14. Retrieved 2023-02-11.
    4. ^ "Studium Generale".
    5. ^ a b Kraft, Steffen (7 June 2012). "Klarheit schaffen". der Freitag (in German). Archived from the original on 16 September 2018. Retrieved 3 July 2012.
    6. ^ "Play more and work less: A visit with Byung-Chul Han in Karlsruhe". Sign and Sight. 2011-07-25. Retrieved 2012-06-09.
    7. The Nation
      .
    8. ^ "'새 대통령에게 선물하고 싶은 책' 1위 철학자 한병철의 '피로사회'". Kyunghyang Shinmun. 2012-11-29. Archived from the original on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2013-12-09.
    9. ^ a b Han, "Psychopolitics" (2017), p. 13
    10. ^ Han, "Psychopolitics" (2017), p. 21
    11. LCCN 2016031913
      .
    12. ^ "Topology of Violence". The MIT Press. Retrieved 2019-01-09.
    13. ^ "Translations".
    14. ^ "2012년 미디어 선정 올해의 책" [2012 Media Picks for Book of the Year]. Aladin Books. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
    15. ^ Elola, Joseba (8 October 2023). "Byung-Chul Han, the philosopher who lives life backwards: 'We believe we're free, but we're the sexual organs of capital'". EL PAÍS English (in Spanish). Retrieved 19 April 2024.
    16. ISSN 0261-3077
      . Retrieved 2019-01-09.
    17. ^ Hamilton (2018-05-16). "Psychopolitics". HONG KONG REVIEW OF BOOKS 香港書評. Retrieved 2019-01-09.
    18. ^ West, Adrian Nathan. "Media and Transparency: An Introduction to Byung-Chul Han in English". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2019-01-09.

    External links

    Wikiquote has quotations related to Byung-Chul Han.
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to Byung-Chul Han.
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Byung-Chul_Han&oldid=1219793327"