Byung-Chul Han

Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, "user-friendly" technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.

The Burnout Society

Landen Angeline

Viral violence cannot account for neuronal ilnesses such as depression, ADHD, or burnout syndrome, for it follows the immunological scheme of inside and outside, Own and Other; it presumes the existence of singularity or alterity which is hostile to the system. Neuronal violence does not proceed from system-foreign negativity. Instead, it is systemic — that is, system-immanent — violence. Depression, ADHD, and burnout syndrome point to excess positivity. Burnout syndrome occurs when the ego overheats, which follows from too much of the Same. The hyper in hyperactivity is not an immunological category. It represents the massification of the positive.

The violence [Gewalt] of positivity that derives from overproduction, overachievement, and overcommunication is no longer viral." Immunology offers no way of approaching the phenome- non. Rejection occurring in response to excess positivity does not amount to immunological defense, but to digestive-neuronal abreaction and refusal. Likewise, exhaustion, fatigue, and suffocation — when too much exists — do not constitute immunological reactions. These phenomena concern neuronal power, which is not viral because it does not derive, from immunological negativity.

Today, even the so-called immigrant is not an immunological Other, not a foreigner in the strong sense, who poses a real danger or of whom one is afraid. Immigrants and refugees are more likely to be perceived as burdens than as threats. 

chris

0xADADA

At a mere 60 pages, Han manages to offer the most comprehensive examination of contemporary society from multiple perspectives: history, economy, ideology, psychoanalysis & power.

But don’t let that fool you, this book is extremely dense. It demands the active contemplation that the book says is lacking in our achievement-society.

Han introduces multiple novel concepts: the achievement-subject, the achievement society which he uses to frame a multipartite cultural shift: 1) From a medieval-industrial culture of oppression & characterized by the Enlightenment values of immunology and Otherness to one of difference characterized by alterity, novelty and possibility, with a privileging of Can over Should. 

With this frame he is able to critique the emergence of our contemporary maladies of ADHD, exhausting, burnout, and depression. It also explains phenomenon like 'hustle-culture', the valorization of self-made man/self-made entrepreneur, the celebration of the rebellious freedom of the silicon valley hacker, and more.

The book argues that contemporary people are trapped up in a contradictory race. On one hand, we encourage ourselves to become ourselves, the best version of ourselves, become the self-made entrepreneur, become the powerful worker, the superstar athlete, the academic achiever, the fully engaged parent, the best friend, etc. Society tells us we can be anything and everything, but the reality is we have limited time and attention, living within a reality of constraints. The cost of all this is a society of hyperactive people with a series of mental maladies: ADHD, exhaustion, burnout, schizophrenia, and depression.

Han offers a clear argument and critique, and offers potentials for lines of flight out.

Not an easy read. I’m predicting re-reading at least 3 times to grasp Han’s ideas fully. This was my first poke at his mind — what a brilliant one too. As a South Korean, I hoped for a subtle overlap of cultural reference points. What a beautiful place it is to be in as a reader, to relate to the author on a hereditary level.

Kelly Kim

Claudia

idk if there’s anything particularly new in here but what makes this book refreshing is that its philosophy that’s not abstruse (wow!!! a concept!!!). its quite concise (!!) and succeeds in articulating the extent to which ~ modern capitalist society ~ has become fully entrenched in the way we see and feel. i particularly like his takes on rage/anger, multitasking, and freedom. at first i thought he was referring to positivity as the inherent value system of modern tech, but if this is a general thesis on capitalism and society i’m not sure if all ‘neuronal diseases’ and our societal malaises can be boiled down to ‘excess positivity’ all the time. anyway, good set of essays + a lot in here that i’ll be mulling over in the days/weeks to come

Imane

I finished this book... but at what cost. And now I have to review this book but it exhausted me so much to get through it that I just feel like taking a nap and forgetting that I ever read these challenging 60 pages lmao.

First, let's start with the obvious: the beginning of this book aged rather poorly. Granted, the author couldn't have known in 2015 that there'd be a global pandemic which would upend his assumption concerning the "immunology" discursive paradigm that he claims has been left in the past. But even then, I disagree with his premise. I don't feel like really getting into it because unraveling his thoughts would require a lot more energy than I'm willing to expand but I'll just summarise the bulk of my thoughts by saying that the defensive discourse around the "Other" cannot be dismissed so easily, and that the rise of fascism worldwide testifies to the fact global socio-political discourses still heavily rely on the us (the Self) versus them (the Other) dichotomy to foster fear and hatred. The author says that refugees aren't seen negatively because they're perceived as a threat but rather as a burden. I fundamentally disagree with his statement and see in it a cop-out to make his assumption obscure reality to continue his argument.

Now I don't disagree with the larger argument that he's making... It's just that I don't think I care about his highly abstract angle. I was expecting musings grounded in empirical observations concerning the burnout society, but what I got was an avalanche of abstractions with a lack (to my non-expert philosopher mind) of logical sequencing of the information. I didn't fully hate the book and I can see its brilliance in some way, but I also don't think this is a book that actually dissects what the burnout society is like. It's more of a series of long-winded philosophical musings about the place of the ego in relation to the "surplus of positivity" (à la Yes we can!) i.e. in a world where one cannot say no anymore.

Parsing through the very opaque academic-speak, I could discern some interesting points, but they were completely obscured by the unintelligibility of the text. "No-longer-being-able-to-ableable" is not a proper term yet the author will gladly use such weird-ass convoluted mashup of words completely unprompted, rather than properly unraveling whatever thought he's trying to convey. Now I don't know if this book was simultaneously too vague and too niche to make any kind of impactful point but I can definitely tell you that the semantics are harder to decipher than the actual overall arguments of the book, and it's a shame.

I try not to make value judgments on academic texts that are somewhat harder to read and interpret because I think their somewhat difficult language can actually help you expand your vocabulary and broaden your understanding of specific/difficult concepts. Having to re-read a paragraph to decipher its meaning isn't necessarily bad. But the author toed a dangerous line here between making valid (although too abstract for my pragmatic mind) points and talking in circles for the sake of it. Maybe it's a philosophy thing. But if you're looking for a more instructive text, do not pick this book up. It is too abstract and convoluted for anyone who wants an empirical diagnosis of the so-called burnout society, and all the arguments are made a contrario, basing themselves on opposing something that someone said rather than making actual first-hand observations. But if you don't mind feeling like you're talking to a sphinx who piggybacks off of other cherry-picked philosophical text with which he fundamentally disagrees, go ahead!

The Burnout Society

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