2021-02-19
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I decided to start a new category for my posts here. It's called
"Bump". I was browsing ancient users on SDF and came accross an
interesting article. Thought someone might find it worthwhile.
Translation of Byung-Chul Han's
"Müdigkeitsgesellscha"
by jboy
or
"Waking up to fatigue society"
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jboy/fatigue-society.txt
Here's a snippet:
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Thus, the entrepreneurial subject of achievement society is in a
situation of ``paradox freedom.'' Drawing on Alain Ehrenberg (whose
work on depression also informs Malabou's What Shall We Do with
Our Brain?), Han notes that a society in which status is no longer
strictly prescribed on the basis of class or gender but which
instead propagates the norm of individual initiative (or, as they
say in the States, ``personal responsibility'') unleashes a new
kind of systemic violence. The entrepreneurial subject is put in
a position of self-exploitation, since the compulsion to labor no
longer emanates from outside of it. It freely becomes an animal
laborans. This form of systemic violence leads to ``psychic
infarctions'' that affect not just the self---the self, Han points
out, is still an immunological category---but the soul, by which
Han means something like the capacity to form social bonds. In
achievement society, this capacity is dissipated by the incessant
command to produce. In other words, the paradox can be expressed
like this: We may be free to undertake any conceivable venture,
but as a result, we lose our soul---or rather, we burn out our
soul. The illnesses mentioned above are the pathological manifestations
of this paradox situation.
The paradox of freedom is nicely captured in this observation:
``The complaint of the depressive individual, Nothing is possible,
is only possible in a society that believes, Nothing is impossible.''
Chapter 3, ``A Deep Boredom,'' turns from over-production to
over-communication. Specifically, Han is concerned with multitasking
as a technique to accommodate the new economy of attention that
has arisen alongside the new forms of productivity. Unlike some
commentators, however, Han does not take multitasking to be a
radically new technique. ``Multitasking is widespread among animals
in the wild,'' he writes. ``It is an attention technique that is
indispensable for wilderness survival.'' Newer social developments
are actually making human society more like the wilderness, where
predators must ensure they aren't eaten while eating their prey.
Han points out that mobbing matches this pattern (and one might
add other forms of bullying).
Human culture, on the other hand, arose from a different kind of
attention technique. Multitasking is a form of hyperattention, but
culture (including philosophy) requires the deep attention of
contemplation. The contemplative life had a bad rep in modern
philosophy; consider Arendt's The Human Condition (which she wanted
to name Vita Activa), or Lukács's opposition to ``the contemplative
duality of subject and object.'' Han wants to build up the vita
comtemplativa's reputation once again.
Thus, the fourth chapter is called ``Vita Activa'' and is dedicated
to a critique of Hannah Arendt. Against Arendt's assumption that
modern development leads ever further down the road of massification
and degradation of humanity, Han notes that the hyperactive,
hyperneurotic individual of contemporary society is anything but
animalistic. It is an animal laborans, but not the sort of animal
that Arendt envisioned. It is, rather, ceaselessly engaged in
individualized activity. Why?
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