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Verso Futures
The law of the innermost form of the essay is heresy.
– Theodor Adorno
Verso Futures is a series of essay-length philosophical and political interventions by both emerging and established writers and thinkers from around the world. Each title in the series addresses the outer limits of political and social possibility.
Also available in Verso Futures:
The Future by Marc Augé
The State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious by Isabell Lorey
Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi
Déjà Vu and the End of History by Paolo Virno
Psychopolitics
Neoliberalism and NewTechnologies of Power
Byung-Chul Han
Translated by Erik Butler
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
First published by Verso 2017
© Byung-Chul Han 2017
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-577-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-576-5 (LIBRARY)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-579-6 (US EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-578-9 (UK EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Han, Byung-Chul, author.
Title: Psychopolitics : neoliberalism and new technologies of power / Byung-Chul Han.
Other titles: Psychopolitik. English
Description: Brooklyn : Verso Books, 2017. | Series: Futures
Identifiers: LCCN 2017039801 | ISBN 9781784785772 (us edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Neoliberalism. | Information technology – Social aspects.
Classification: LCC HB95 .H3313 2017 | DDC 320.51/3 – dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039801
Typeset in Sabon by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, UK
Contents
1. The Crisis of Freedom
2. Smart Power
3. The Mole and the Snake
4. Biopolitics
5. Foucault’s Dilemma
6. Healing as Killing
7. Shock
8. Friendly Big Brother
9. Emotional Capitalism
10. Gamification
11. Big Data
12. Beyond the Subject
13. Idiotism
Notes
Protect me from what I want.
Jenny Holzer
The Exploitation of Freedom
Freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude. Freedom is felt when passing from one way of living to another – until this too turns out to be a form of coercion. Then, liberation gives way to renewed subjugation. Such is the destiny of the subject; literally, the ‘one who has been cast down’.
Today, we do not deem ourselves subjugated subjects, but rather projects: always refashioning and reinventing ourselves. A sense of freedom attends passing from the state of subject to that of project. All the same, this projection amounts to a form of compulsion and constraint – indeed, to a more efficient kind of subjectivation and subjugation. As a project deeming itself free of external and alien limitations, the I is now subjugating itself to internal limitations and self-constraints, which are taking the form of compulsive achievement and optimization.
We are living in a particular phase of history: freedom itself is bringing forth compulsion and constraint. The freedom of Can generates even more coercion than the disciplinarian Should, which issues commandments and prohibitions. Should has a limit. In contrast, Can has none. Thus, the compulsion entailed by Can is unlimited. And so we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. Technically, freedom means the opposite of coercion and compulsion. Being free means being free from constraint. But now freedom itself, which is supposed to be the opposite of constraint, is producing coercion. Psychic maladies such as depression and burnout express a profound crisis of freedom. They represent pathological signs that freedom is now switching over into manifold forms of compulsion.
Although the achievement-subject deems itself free,
