Byung-Chul Han

Nesta obra rigorosamente filosófica, Byung-Chul Han reflete, tomando como referência Kant, Heidegger, Lévinas e Canetti, entre outros, sobre a re-ação à morte para indagar a complexa tensão entre este conceito em relação aos de poder, identidade e transformação. Morte e alteridade se inspira na fenomenologia e na literatura contemporânea para contrapor as reações de ou a ênfase do eu ou o amor heróico na hora de encarar a morte. Além disso, mostra outra maneira de “ser para a morte” em um modo de tomar consciência da mortalidade que conduz à serenidade. Dessa maneira, tematiza-se uma experiência da finitude com a qual se aguça uma sensibilidade especial para o que não é o eu: a afabilidade.

La psicopolítica es un poder inteligente, sutil y silencioso, que es capaz de penetrar en nuestra psique para explotarla y controlarla sin que nos demos cuenta, seduciéndonos incluso para que colaboremos con ella voluntariamente.

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.

Es gibt Dinge, die nicht verschwinden. Zu ihnen gehört auch die Gewalt. Die Gewaltaversion (Jan Philipp Reemtsma) zeichnet nicht die Moderne aus. Die Gewalt ist proteischer als man denkt. Sie verändert nur ihre Erscheinungsform. Heute zieht sie sich in subkutane, subkommunikative, kapillare und neuronale Räume zurück und nimmt eine mikrophysische Form an, die auch ohne die Negativität der Herrschaft oder Feindschaft ausgeübt wird. Sie verlagert sich vom Sichtbaren ins Unsichtbare, vom Brachialen ins Mediale und vom Frontalen ins Virale. Nicht offene Angriffe, sondern Ansteckungen sind ihre Wirkungsweisen. Hans Topologie der Gewalt zeichnet vor allem jene Transformation des Gewaltgeschehens, die sich als der Wandel von der Dekapitation (vormoderne Gesellschaft der Souveränität und des Blutes) über die Deformation (moderne Disziplinargesellschaft) bis hin zur Depression (heutige Leistungs- und Müdigkeitsgesellschaft) vollzieht. Han setzt damit seine bereits in Müdigkeitsgesellschaft begonnene beunruhigende Analyse unserer Zeit fort.--

"Digital communication and social media have taken over our lives. In this contrarian reflection on digitized life, Byung-Chul Han counters the cheerleaders for Twitter revolutions and Facebook activism by arguing that digital communication is in fact responsible for the disintegration of community and public space and is slowly eroding any possibility for real political action and meaningful political discourse. In the predigital, analog era, by the time an angry letter to the editor had been composed, mailed, and received, the immediate agitation had passed. Today, digital communication enables instantaneous, impulsive reaction, meant to express and stir up outrage on the spot. Meanwhile, the public, the senders and receivers of these communications have become a digital swarm -- not a mass, or a crowd, or Negri and Hardt's antiquated notion of a "multitude," but a set of isolated individuals incapable of forming a "we," incapable of calling dominant power relations into question, incapable of formulating a future because of an obsession with the present. The digital swarm is a fragmented entity that can focus on individual persons only in order to make them an object of scandal. Han, one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, describes a society in which information has overrun thought, in which the same algorithms are employed by Facebook, the stock market, and the intelligence services. Democracy is under threat because digital communication has made freedom and control indistinguishable. Big Brother has been succeeded by Big Data."

"Transparency is the order of the day. It is a term, a slogan, that dominates public discourse about corruption and freedom of information. Considered crucial to democracy, it touches our political and economic lives as well as our private lives. Anyone can obtain information about anything. Everything -and everyone- has become transparent: unveiled or exposed by the apparatuses that exert a kind of collective control over the post-capitalist world. For transparency has a dark side that, ironically, has everything to do with a lack of mystery, shadow, and nuance. Behind the apparent accessibility of knowledge lies the disappearance of privacy, homogenization, and the collapse of trust. The anxiety to accumulate ever more information does not necessarily produce more knowledge or faith. Technology creates the illusion of total containment and constant monitoring of information, but what we lack is adequate interpretation of the information. In this manifesto, Byung-Chul Han denounces transparency as a false ideal, the strongest and most pernicious of our contemporary mythologies."--

Dans ce livre, dont le titre original est "Agonie de l'Éros", le philosophe allemand d'origine coréenne Byung-chul Han nous fait part de son désarroi face à la mort programmée du désir. Il soupçonne l'amour d'être actuellement en danger mortel, sous l'effet du règne de l'identique : ce que cherchent les sujets, entre sexe rapide et pornographie, ce sont des objets de satisfaction, non des autres - susceptibles de les déconcerter, de les entraîner dans une passion où ils se perdraient pour se transfigurer.

Our societies today are characterized by a universal algophobia: a generalized fear of pain. We strive to avoid all painful conditions – even the pain of love is treated as suspect. This algophobia extends into society: less and less space is given to conflicts and controversies that might prompt painful discussions. It takes hold of politics too: politics becomes a palliative politics that is incapable of implementing radical reforms that might be painful, so all we get is more of the same. Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, the palliative society is transformed into a society of survival. The virus enters the palliative zone of well-being and turns it into a quarantine zone in which life is increasingly focused on survival. And the more life becomes survival, the greater the fear of death: the pandemic makes death, which we had carefully repressed and set aside, visible again. Everywhere, the prolongation of life at any cost is the preeminent value, and we are prepared to sacrifice everything that makes life worth living for the sake of survival. This trenchant analysis of our contemporary societies by one of the most original cultural critics of our time will appeal to a wide readership.