Han, B.-C., & Butler, E. (2015). The Burnout Society. Stanford Briefs, an imprint of Stanford University Press.
Summary
In this collection of essays, Han develops the idea of our modern society as an “achievement society.” In contrast to the “disciplinary society” of the previous century, today’s world is driven by positivity and exhaustion. This is problematic for human culture because creative generation is only possible with profound boredom, whereas achievement-subjects are forced into hyperattention due to saturation of information. Han sees the fragmentation of multitasking as a regression to animalistic survival techniques, rather than a demonstration of advanced rationality.
Key terms
- Vita contemplativa = the contemplative life.
- Vita activa = the active life.
- Animal laborans = a species that is distinguished from other animals “not by its thinking, but by its labor”; a term used by Marx to describe modern man.
- Homo sacer = “someone excluded from society because of a trespass”, and thus entirely disposable (i.e., able to be killed without punishment).
Reading notes
Neuronal Power
- An immunological model does not accurately explain modern society, since modern society is not troubled by a foreign Other.
- An immunological society uses a dialectic of negativity, as the intrusive other is negated by the immune system.
- Because there less threatening Otherness, our current society has less negativity.
- Neuronal violence comes from the excess of positivity in a society that overproduces, overachieves, and overcommunicates.
Otherness represents the fundamental category of immunology. Every immunoreaction is a reaction to Otherness.
The violence of positivity does not presume or require hostility. It unfolds specifically in a permissive and pacified society.
The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts.
Beyond Disciplinary Society
- Instead of being a disciplinary society with obedience-subjects, our current society is an achievement society with achievement-subjects.
- Disciplinary society is characterized by negativity, using “prohibitions, commandments, and the law.”
- Achievement society is characterized by positivity, replacing laws with “projects, initiatives, and motivation.”
- Disciplinary society transitions continuously to achievement society in the process of increasing productivity.
- Depression is the defining illness of achievement society, after Han
- Depression lacks an immunological explanation.
- ”Destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression” come from inability to continue achieving.
- Achievement-subjects exploit themselves; achievement society has auto-exploitation, not allo-exploitation.
The negativity of compulsion adheres to Should. … Unlimited Can is the positive modal verb of achievement society.
Yet depression also follows from impoverished attachment, which is a characteristic of the increasing fragmentation and atomization of life in society.
The depressive human being is an animal laborans that exploits itself—and it does so voluntarily, without external constraints. It is predator and prey at once.
The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Noting is impossible.”
The achievement-subject gives itself over to compulsive freedom—that is, to the free constraint of maximizing achievement.
Profound Boredom
- Attitudes toward time and attention affect the structure of attention and cognition
- Multitasking is a regression to the behavior of wild animals
- In contrast, Humanity’s greatest cultural achievements are produced through deep contemplation, which is increasingly impossible as it is replaced by hyperattention.
- Hyperattention is the scattering of awareness through “rash change of focus between different tasks, sources of information, and processes.”
- Idleness is needed for creative generation
- Hyperattention does not produce, but repeats what is already available
- The highest form of mental relaxation is profound boredom
- Idleness leads to deep attention, which characterizes The contemplative life first named by Aristotle as a mode of human excellence in aristotle-nichomachean-ethics.
Excess positivity also expresses itself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically changes the structure and economy of attention. Perception becomes fragmented and scattered. Moreover, the mounting burden of work makes it necessary to adopt particular dispositions toward time and attention; this in turn affects the structure of attention and cognition.
The attitude toward time and environment known as “multitasking” does not represent civilizational progress … Rather, such an aptitude amounts to regression. Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals. It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness.
Culture presumes an environment in which deep attention is possible.
If sleep represents the high point of bodily relaxation, deep boredom is the peak of mental relaxation. … Boredom is a “warm gray fabric on the inside, with the most lustrous and colorful silks”; “in this fabric we wrap ourselves when we dream.” We are “at home … in the arabesques of its lining.”
The basic mood that distinguishes [vita contemplativa, or the contemplative life] is marveling at the way things are, which has nothing to do with practicality or processuality. … Yet the capacity for contemplation need not be bound to imperishable Being. Especially whatever is floating, inconspicuous, or fleeing reveals itself only to deep, contemplative attention.
- As Aristotle argues, the contemplative life, which is done by philosophers among others, is inherently non-productive!
- Han mentions philosophy also, as one of human cultural achievements. This seems to assume philosophy as knowledge and a body of human cognitive output, rather than a practice.
- What is being achieved in practicing philosophy? Or is the ability for humanity to structure a society conducive to philosophy (i.e., through politics) an achievement itself?
- How is this related to the topic of Aristotelian wonder from Jagannathan’s class?
- Han mentions philosophy also, as one of human cultural achievements. This seems to assume philosophy as knowledge and a body of human cognitive output, rather than a practice.
Merleau-Ponty describes Cezanne’s mode of contemplatively observing a landscape as a kind of externalization or de-interiorization: “… The landscape thinks itself in me,” he said, “and I am its consciousness.”
Vita Activa
The late-modern animal laborans is anything but animalian. It is hyperactive and hyperneurotic. There must be another answer to why all human activities in late modernity are sinking to the level of mere laboring—and, more still, why such hectic nervousness prevails.
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.
This bare life has the particularity of not being absolutely expendable; rather, it cannot be killed absolutely. It is undead, so to speak.
- I don’t entirely understand the point about being undead. What are the implications of a society where all the subjects are undead?
- Is it that achievement-subjects are indistinguishable, hence their labor output is replaceable? But this would contradict Han’s argument by making them no different from original animal laborans.
The Society of Tiredness
Tiredness in achievement society is solitary tiredness; it has a separating and isolating effect. … Tiredness of this kind proves violent because it destroys all that is common or shared, all proximity, and even language itself.
As the I grows smaller, the gravity of being shifts from the ego to the world. It is “tiredness that trusts in the world”, whereas I-tiredness—“solitary tiredness”—is worldless, world-destroying tiredness.
Less I means more world: “Now tiredness was my friend. I was back in the world again” (28).
”Fundamental tiredness” inspires. It allows the spirit/intellect [Geist] to emerge. Thereby, the “inspiration of tiredness” involves not-doing: … “The inspiration of tiredness tells them not so much what they should, as what they should not, be” (41).
Tiredness the human to being to experience singular calm [Gelassenheit], serene not-doing. It is not a state in which the senses languish or grow dull. Rather, it rouses a special kind of visibility.
For Handke, deep tiredness rises to become a form of salvation, a form of rejuvenation. It brings back a sense of wonder into the world.
Handke sets the hand at play—which does not grasp resolutely—in opposition to the laboring, gripping hand.
Deep tiredness loosens the strictures of identity. Things flicker, twinkle, and vibrate at the edges. … This particular in-difference lends them an aura of friendliness. … This tiredness founds a deep friendship and makes it possible to conceive of a community that requires neither belonging nor relation [Verwandtschaft].
- I think this is the premise that I am the most skeptical of.
- It is hard for me to conceive of deep tiredness that reduces the ego (what would that look like in reality?), but it is at least conceivable.
- I don’t understand how tiredness connects “human beings and things” so deeply.
The Sabbath, too—a word that originally meant stopping—is a day of not-to; speaking with Heidegger, it is a day free of all in-order-to, of all care. It is a matter of interval.
- Importance of tiredness and rest in the Bible!
Burnout Society
I-tiredness, as solitary tiredness, is worldless and world-destroying; it annihilates all reference to the Other in favor of narcissistic self-reference.
Like disciplinary society, [Freud’s] psychic apparatus sets up walls, thresholds, borders, and guards. For this reason, Freudian psychoanalysis is only possible in repressive societies that found their organization on the negativity of prohibitions and commandments.
As the subject of duty, the moral subject represses all pleasurable inclinations in favor of virtue; God, who epitomizes morality, rewards such painfully performed labors with happiness. Happiness is distributed in exact proportion to morality. The moral subject, which accepts pain for morality, may be entirely certain of gratification. There is no threat of a crisis of gratification occurring, for God does not deceive: He is trustworthy.
- This passage was especially memorable to me because of reading the Bible, and thinking about the covenant. How God had to prove his trustworthiness to the children of Israel, who were not “certain of gratification.” Trust is an interesting theme!
The absence of relation to the Other, then, represents the transcendental condition for the crisis of gratification to arise in the first place.
A definitive work, as the result of completed labor, is no longer possible today. Contemporary relations of production stand in the way of conclusion. Instead, one works into the open.
The socially conditioned impossibility of objectively valid, definitive forms of closure drives the subject into narcissistic self-repetition; consequently, it fails to achieve gestalt, stable self-image, or character. … The feeling of having achieved a goal never occurs.