A review by mustardseed
Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, by Byung-Chul Han
4.0
“Neoliberal psychopolitics is a technology of domination that stabilises and perpetuates the prevailing system by means of psychological programming and steering.”
Very bitesized and aside from the occasional annoying tendency of philo books to use complicated terms and expect me to understand (what is “a society with discourse immanent to society itself”?????) surprisingly accessible ideas that don’t go on for too long to make me lose all will (to read, I mean).
A bit of a red-pill moment that kind of articulated a lot of thoughts I’ve had over the course of my JC life (perhaps a microcosm of the kind of Capitalist structure we live in but Capital is academics/uni admissions) re: the structures we exist in and the very subtle ways they exert control over us.
Central idea: Neoliberal capitalism (modern-day capitalism, diff from the kind Marx envisioned) exerts control over all people through psychopolitics and Big Tech/Data, i.e. self surveillance, self optimisation, dissemination of the self online.
Faith’s chaotic summary:
1: The Crisis of Freedom — a) People willingly subjugate themselves to Capital, such that Marx’s idea of the proletariat no longer exists because all social classes are subsumed to Capital (which transcends everything). b) People are no longer subjects but projects (of their own surveillance and optimisation) which is its own insidious form of lack-of-control. c) Big tech removes all interiority of people because they willingly share their entire lives online.
2: Smart Power — Neoliberalism appears to be positive and its main symbol and seal is the Like button
3: The Mole & The Snake — Previous forms of Capitalism were like moles where they roamed in predetermined areas (due to material form of production, which means limits to productivity). Capitalism today is like a snake where it creates its own areas (due to immaterial form of production, no limit to productivity).
4: Biopolitics — Using demographic trends to exert control
5: Foucault’s Dilemna — Moving from discipline of phyiscal body (capitalism as material production) to optimisation of mind (capitalism as immaterial production)
6: Healing as Killing — “Self-optimisation, as it turns out, amounts to total self-exploitation.” Neoliberal capitalism is positive so refuses everything negative including pain unless it serves a greater purpose of optimisation (whereas the author argues that such negatives are necessary to the human life).
7: Shock — Neoliberal capitalism doesn’t shock (negative) but enlists liking (seeks to fulfill rather than suppress)
8: Friendly Big Brother — Everyone is their own panapticon; no one feels suppressed or surveilled by a larger force but now they surveil and monitor themselves
9: Emotional Capitalism — Capitalism exploits emotions and channels it into a new means of production (immaterial production); it is also used to increase consumption (e.g. associating a product with a certain emotion leads someone to want to buy it more).
10: Gamification — Games and luxury have been co-opted to serve Capitalism (should instead exist as the opposite of Labour). Profanation (e.g. tearing up money, using it for another purpose than the original) offers a margin to play, wherein play is free from the time space margin and thus truly the antithesis of Capitalism.
11: Big Data — Data has come to be seen as the answer to a lot of things including understanding the world, predicting the future. However, it has no soul (can show correlation but cannot give explanation for relation or larger concept which requires narration/syllogism), and cannot predict the future because Events (that propels us into the future) are statistically unlikely.
12: Beyond the Subject — a) Explanation of an Event as an experience which transforms & negates all that comes before b) Politics of silence against sharing as proposed by Deleuze
13: Idiotism — The idiot is the only one who achieves immanance (not subscribing to the transcendent Capitalism but lives in the relation and life itself), much like young children