Name: Doug Belshaw's review of The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han
Item: The Burnout Society
Author: Doug Belshaw

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

Doug Belshaw

The capitalist economy absolutizes survival. It is not concerned with the good life.30 It is sustained by the illusion that more capital produces more life, which means a greater capacity for living.

Today violence issues more readily from the conformism of consensus than from the antagonism of dissent. In this sense—contra Habermas—one might speak of the violence of consensus .

Achievement society is the society of self-exploitation. The achievement-subject exploits itself until it burns out. In the process, it develops auto-aggression that often enough escalates into the violence of self-destruction.

According to this view, the depressive is one who is “exhausted by his sovereignty”—that is, no longer has the power to be his own master. The depressive is tired from the constant “need for initiative.”

With its idea of freedom and deregulation, contemporary achievement society is massively dismantling the barriers and prohibitions that constituted disciplinary society. The dismantling of negativity serves to enhance achievement.

The late-modern achievement-subject does not pursue works of duty. Its maxims are not obedience, law, and the fulfillment of obligation, but rather freedom, pleasure, and inclination. Above all, it expects the profits of enjoyment from work. It works for pleasure and does not act at the behest of the Other. Instead, it hearkens mainly to itself . After all, it must be a self-starting entrepreneur [Unternehmer seiner selbst]. In this way, it rids itself of the negativity of the “commanding [gebietender] Other.” However, such freedom from the Other is not just emancipating and liberating. The dialectic of freedom means developing new constraints. Freedom from the Other switches into narcissistic self-relation, which occasions many of the psychic disturbances afflicting today’s achievement-subject.

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.

The general distraction afflicting contemporary society does not allow the emphasis and energy of rage to arise. Rage is the capacity to interrupt a given state and 

. Today it is yielding more and more to offense or annoyance [Ärgernis], “having a beef,” which proves incapable of effecting decisive change.

Nietzsche writes: “Active men are generally wanting in the higher activity . . . in this regard they are lazy. . . . The active roll as the stone rolls, in obedience to the stupidity of the laws of mechanics.” Different kinds of action and activity exist. Activity that follows an unthinking, mechanical course is poor in interruption. Machines cannot pause. Despite its enormous capacity for calculation, the computer is stupid insofar as it lacks the ability to delay.

The goal of education, according to Nietzsche, is “noble culture.” Learning to see means “getting your eyes used to calm, to patience, to letting things come to you”—that is, making yourself capable of deep and contemplative attention, casting a long and slow gaze.

The general denarrativization of the world is reinforcing the feeling of fleetingness. It makes life bare. Work itself is a bare activity. The activity of bare laboring corresponds entirely to bare life. Merely working and merely living define and condition each other.

Nietzsche already observed that, after the death of God, health rose to divine status.

Culture presumes an environment in which deep attention is possible. Increasingly, such immersive reflection is being displaced by an entirely different form of attention: hyperattention. A rash change of focus between different tasks, sources of information, and processes characterizes this scattered mode of awareness. Since it also has a low tolerance for boredom, it does not admit the profound idleness that benefits the creative process.

If sleep represents the high point of bodily relaxation, deep boredom is the peak of mental relaxation. A purely hectic rush produces nothing new. It reproduces and accelerates what is already available.

Human beings in the late-modern society of work and information are not the only ones capable of multitasking. Rather, such an aptitude amounts to regression. Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals. It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness.

In the wild, the animal is forced to divide its attention between various activities. That is why animals are incapable of contemplative immersion—either they are eating or they are copulating. The animal cannot immerse itself contemplatively in what it is facing [ Gegenüber ] because it must also process background events. Not just multitasking but also activities such as video games produce a broad but flat mode of attention, which is similar to the vigilance of a wild animal. Recent social developments and the structural change of wakefulness are bringing human society deeper and deeper into the wilderness.

The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.” No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression. The achievement-subject finds itself fighting with itself. The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself.

In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new 

Prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation. Disciplinary society is still governed by 

. Its negativity produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers.

Today’s society is no longer Foucault’s disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society 

. Also, its inhabitants are no longer “obedience-subjects” but “achievement-subjects.” They are entrepreneurs of themselves. The walls of disciplinary institutions, which separate the normal from the abnormal, have come to seem archaic. Foucault’s analysis of power cannot account for the psychic and topological changes that occurred as disciplinary society transformed into achievement society. Nor does the commonly employed concept of “control society” do justice to this change. 

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. 

It's difficult to 'rate' or even discuss a book like this as a whole. The central premise is that we've moved from a disciplinary society to an achievement society which, curiously, means we end up burned out.

The author uses the work of other intellectuals as a jumping off point - usually by disagreeing with them - and writes in a very dense way. This means you have to re-read some paragraphs and, because some German words are given in parentheses, you feel that sometimes the translation is, as all translations must be, imperfect.

It's difficult to 'rate' or even discuss a book like this as a whole. The central premise is that we've moved from a disciplinary society to an achievement society which, curiously, means we end up burned out.

The author uses the work of other intellectuals as a jumping off point - usually by disagreeing with them - and writes in a very dense way. This means you have to re-read some paragraphs and, because some German words are given in parentheses, you feel that sometimes the translation is, as all translations must be, imperfect.

The subject is very interesting but I can’t stand this type of writing anymore. 

Manu

Very very interesting way of thinking and says a lot about the current order of the world but at the same time disagree with some foundations/premises. 

Ananya Jain

love how this offers a sharp critique of the pressures of contemporary neoliberalism where self exploitation has become the norm, it dives into how our culture’s emphasis on productivity, constant performance, and self improvement leads to burnout and social isolation. although i think that this book lacks an intersectional perspective, it provides a compelling framework for understanding how these societal pressures affect individuals across various backgrounds. complex but a very good read

aahir

Very accurately describes current society 

Vlad Kyshkan

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!

Doug Belshaw &
The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han

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Doug Belshaw &
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