Books: The Burnout Society

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+[[!meta title="The Burnout Society"]]
+
+* Author: Byung-Chul Han
+
+## Nano-resenha
+
+Muito interessante. No entando, tomando emprestado a prática do autor de citar
+para contradizer, é muito complicado definir a vigência de paradigmas de forma
+estaque. Paradigmas se sobrepõem, coexistem.
+
+## Excerpts
+
+### The immunological age
+
+    The past century was an immunological age. The epoch sought to distinguish
+    clearly between inside and outside, friend and foe, self and other. The Cold
+    War also followed an immunological pattern. Indeed, the immunological paradigm
+    of the last century was commanded by the vocabulary of the Cold War, an
+    altogether military dispositive. Attack and defense determine immunological
+    action. The immunological dispositive, which extends beyond the strictly social
+    and onto the whole of communal life, harbors a blind spot: everything foreign
+    is simply combated and warded off. The object of immune defense is the foreign
+    as such. Even if it has no hostile intentions, even if it poses no danger, it
+    is eliminated on the basis of its Otherness.
+
+### Multitasking, hyperactivity and boredom
+
+    Excessive 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 [Zeit-und Aufmerksamkeitstechnik]; this in turn affects the
+    structure of attention and cognition. The attitude toward time and environment
+    known as “multitasking” does not represent civilizational progress. 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.
+
+    An animal busy with eating must also attend to other tasks. For example, it
+    must hold rivals away from its prey. It must constantly be on the lookout, lest
+    it be eaten while eating. At the same time, it must guard its young and keep an
+    eye on its sexual partner. 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. For example, bullying has achieved pandemic
+    dimensions. Concern for the good life, which also includes life as a member of
+    the community, is yielding more and more to the simple concern for survival.
+
+    We owe the cultural achievements of humanity—which include philosophy—to deep,
+    contemplative attention. 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.
+
+### Rage
+
+    Rage is the capacity to interrupt a given state and make a new state begin.
+
+### Positivity
+
+    The computer calculates more quickly than the human brain and takes on
+    inordinate quantities of data without difficulty because it is free of all
+    Otherness. It is a machine of positivity [Positivmaschine]. Because of autistic
+    self-referentiality, because negativity is absent, an idiot savant can perform
+    what otherwise only a calculator can do. The general positivization of the
+    world means that both human beings and society are transforming into autistic
+    performance-machines.
+
+### Tiredness
+
+    Tiredness in achievement society is solitary tiredness; it has a separating and
+    isolating effect.
+
+### Psyche
+
+    The psyche of today’s achievement-subject differs from the psyche of the
+    disciplinary subject. The ego, as Freud defines it, is a well-known
+    disciplinary subject. Freud’s psychic apparatus is a repressive apparatus with
+    commandments and prohibitions that subjugate and repress. Like disciplinary
+    society, the 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. Contemporary society, however, is a society of achievement;
+    increasingly, it is shedding the negativity of prohibitions and commandments
+    and presenting itself as a society of freedom. The modal verb that determines
+    achievement society is not the Freudian Should, but Can. This social
+    transformation entails intrapsychic restructuring. The late-modern
+    achievement-subject possesses an entirely different psyche than the
+    obedience-subject for whom Freud conceived psychoanalysis. Freud’s psychic
+    apparatus is dominated by negation [Verneinung], repression, and fear of
+    transgression. The ego is a “seat of anxiety” [Angststätte].3 In contrast, the
+    late-modern achievement-subject is poor in negation. It is a subject of
+    affirmation. Were the unconscious necessarily connected to the negativity of
+    negation and repression [Verdrängung], then the late-modern achievement-subject
+    would no longer have an unconscious. It would be a post-Freudian ego. 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 work performed by the Freudian ego involves the fulfillment of duty, above
+    all. On this score, it shares a feature with the Kantian obedience-subject. For
+    Kant, the conscience occupies the position of the superego. Kant’s moral
+    subject is subject to “power” [Gewalt], too: Every man has a conscience and
+    finds himself observed, threatened, and, in general, kept in awe (respect
+    coupled with fear) by an internal judge; and this authority watching over the
+    law in him is not something that he himself (voluntarily) makes, but something
+    incorporated into his being.4 The Kantian subject, like the Freudian subject,
+    is internally divided. It acts at the behest of Another; however, this Other is
+    also part of itself: Now, this original intellectual and (since it is the
+    thought of duty) moral predisposition called conscience is peculiar in that,
+    although its business is a business of man with himself, one constrained by his
+    reason sees himself constrained to carry it on as at the bidding of another
+    person.5
+    
+    On the basis of this split, Kant speaks of a “doubled self,” or “dual
+    personality.”6 The moral subject is simultaneously defendant and judge.  The
+    obedience-subject is not a subject of desire or pleasure, but a subject of
+    duty. Thus, the Kantian subject pursues the work of duty and represses its
+    “inclinations.” Hereby, God—that “omnipotent moral being”—does not appear only
+    as the instance of punishment and condemnation, but also (and this is a very
+    important fact, which seldom receives due attention) as the instance of
+    gratification. 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 [Glückseligkeit].
+    Happiness is “distributed in exact proportion to morality [Sittlichkeit].”7 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.
+    
+    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 absence of relation to the Other causes a crisis of gratification. As
+    recognition, gratification presupposes the instance of the Other (or the “Third
+    Party”). It is impossible to reward oneself or to acknowledge oneself. For
+    Kant, God represents the instance of gratification: He rewards and acknowledges
+    moral accomplishment. Because the structure of gratification has been
+    disturbed, the achievement-subject feels compelled to perform more and more.
+    The absence of relation to the Other, then, represents the transcendental
+    condition for the crisis of gratification to arise in the first place. However,
+    contemporary relations of production are also responsible. A definitive work
+    [Werk], as the result of completed labor [Arbeit], is no longer possible today.
+    Contemporary relations of production stand in the way of conclusion. Instead,
+    one works into the open. Conclusive forms [Abschlußformen] with a beginning and
+    an end prove wanting.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Hysteria is a typical psychic malady of the disciplinary society that witnessed
+    the founding of psychoanalysis. It presumes the negativity of repression,
+    prohibition, and negation, which lead to the formation of the unconscious.
+    Drive-representations [Triebrepräsentanzen] that have been pushed off into the
+    unconscious manifest themselves, by means of “conversion,” as bodily symptoms
+    that mark a person unambiguously. Hysterics exhibit a characteristic morphe.
+    Therefore, hysteria admits morphology; this fact distinguishes it from
+    depression.
+    
+    According to Freud, “character” is a phenomenon of negativity, for it does not
+    achieve form without the censorship that occurs in the psychic apparatus.
+    Accordingly, he defines it as “a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes.”10
+    When the ego becomes aware of object-cathexes taking place in the id, it either
+    lets them be or fights them off through the process of repression. Character
+    contains the history of repression within itself. It represents a determinate
+    relation of the ego to the id and to the superego. Whereas the hysteric shows a
+    characteristic morphe, the depressive is formless; indeed, he is amorphous. He
+    is a man without character. One might generalize the observation and declare
+    that the late-modern ego has no character. Carl Schmitt says it is a “sign of
+    inner conflict to have more than one real enemy.”11 The same holds for friends.
+    Following Schmitt, having more than one true friend would betoken a lack of
+    character and definition. One’s many friends on Facebook would offer further
+    proof of the late-modern ego’s lack of character and definition. In positive
+    terms, such a human being without character is flexible, able to assume any
+    form, play any role, or perform any function. This shapelessness—or,
+    alternately, flexibility—creates a high degree of economic efficiency.
+
+    Psychoanalysis presupposes the negativity of repression and negation. The
+    unconscious and repression, Freud stresses, are “correlative” to the greatest
+    extent. In contrast, the process of repression or negation plays no role in
+    contemporary psychic maladies such as depression, burnout, and ADHD. Instead,
+    they indicate an excess of positivity, that is, not negation so much as the
+    inability to say no; they do not point to not-being-allowed-to-do-anything
+    [Nicht-Dürfen], but to being-able-to-do-everything [Alles-Können]. Therefore,
+    psychoanalysis offers no way of approaching these phenomena. Depression is not
+    a consequence of repression that stems from instances of domination such as the
+    superego. Nor does depression permit “transference,” which offers indirect
+    signs of what has been repressed.
+    
+    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. Matters reach a general state of dissolution and
+    boundlessness—indeed, a state of general promiscuity—from which no energy of
+    repression issues. Where restrictive sexual morality does not prevent the
+    impulses of drives from being discharged, paranoid delusions do not emerge—such
+    as those of Daniel Paul Schreber, which Freud traced back to repressed
+    homosexuality. The “Schreber Case” typifies nineteenth-century disciplinary
+    society, where the strict prohibition of homosexuality—indeed, of pleasure and
+    desire as a whole—predominated.
+    
+    The unconscious plays no part in depression. It no longer governs the psychic
+    apparatus of the depressive achievement-subject.
+    
+    [...]
+    
+    Freud understands melancholy as a destructive relationship to the Other that
+    has been made part of the self through narcissistic identification. In this
+    process, the originary conflicts with the Other are internalized and
+    transformed into a conflicted self-relationship that leads to
+    ego-impoverishment and auto-aggression. However, the depressive disorder of the
+    contemporary achievement-subject does not follow upon a conflicted, ambivalent
+    relation to the Other that now has gone missing. No dimension of alterity is
+    involved. Depression—which often culminates in burnout—follows from
+    overexcited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive
+    traits. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to
+    speak. It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely
+    incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the
+    Other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the
+    self to hollow and empty out. It wears out in a rat race it runs against
+    itself.
+
+    New media and communications technology are also diluting being-for-otherness
+    [Sein zum Anderen]. The virtual world is poor in alterity and the resistance
+    [Widerständlichkeit] it displays. In virtual spaces, the ego can practically
+    move independent of the “reality principle,” which would provide a principle of
+    alterity and resistance. In all the imaginary spaces of virtuality, the
+    narcissistic ego encounters itself first and foremost. Increasingly,
+    virtualization and digitalization are making the real disappear, which makes
+    itself known above all through its resistance. The real is a stay in the double
+    meaning of the word. It not only offers interruption and resistance, but also
+    affords stopping and support.
+    
+    The late-modern achievement-subject, with a surplus of options at its disposal,
+    proves incapable of intensive bonding. Depression severs all attachments.
+    Mourning differs from depression above all through its strong libidinal
+    attachment to an object. In contrast, depression is objectless and therefore
+    undirected. It is important to distinguish depression from melancholy.
+    Melancholy is preceded by the experience of loss. Therefore it still stands in
+    a relation—namely, negative relation—to the absent thing or party. In contrast,
+    depression is cut off from all relation and attachment. It utterly lacks
+    gravity [Schwerkraft].
+    
+    Mourning occurs when an object with a strong libidinal cathexis goes missing.
+    One who mourns is entirely with the beloved Other. The late-modern ego devotes
+    the majority of libidinal energy to itself. The remaining libido is distributed
+    and scattered among continually multiplying contacts and fleeting
+    relationships. It proves quite easy to withdraw the weakened libido from the
+    Other and to use it to cathect new objects. There is no need for drawn-out,
+    pain-filled “dream work.” In social networks, the function of “friends” is
+    primarily to heighten narcissism by granting attention, as consumers, to the
+    ego exhibited as a commodity.
+    
+    [...]
+    
+    Seen in this light, depression no longer represents the “lost relation to
+    conflict,” but rather the absent relation to an objective instance of decision
+    that would produce conclusive forms and thereby assure an instance of
+    gratification.
+
+### Burnout
+
+    Burnout, which often precedes depression, does not point to a sovereign
+    individual who has come to lack the power to be the “master of himself.”
+    Rather, burnout represents the pathological consequence of voluntary
+    self-exploitation. The imperative of expansion, transformation, and
+    self-reinvention—of which depression is the flipside—presumes an array of
+    products tied to identity. The more often one changes one’s identity, the more
+    production is dynamized. Industrial disciplinary society relied on unchanging
+    identity, whereas postindustrial achievement society requires a flexible person
+    to heighten production.
+
+    [...]
+
+    The late-modern achievement-subject is subject to no one. In fact, it is no
+    longer a subject in the etymological sense (subject to, sujet à). It
+    positivizes itself; indeed, it liberates itself into a project. However, the
+    change from subject to project does not make power or violence disappear.
+    Auto-compulsion, which presents itself as freedom, takes the place of
+    allo-compulsion. This development is closely connected to capitalist relations
+    of production. Starting at a certain level of production, auto-exploitation is
+    significantly more efficient and brings much greater returns [leistungsstärker]
+    than allo-exploitation, because the feeling of freedom attends it. 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. The project turns
+    out to be a projectile that the achievement-subject is aiming at itself.
+
+    [...]
+
+    In view of the ego ideal, the real ego appears as a loser buried in
+    self-reproach. The ego wages war with itself. The society of positivity, which
+    thinks itself free of all foreign constraints, becomes entangled in destructive
+    self-constraints. Psychic maladies such as burnout and depression, the
+    exemplary maladies of the twenty-first century, all display auto-aggressive
+    traits. Exogenous violence is replaced by self-generated violence, which is
+    more fatal than its counterpart inasmuch as the victim of such violence
+    considers itself free.
+    
+    [...]
+    
+    The capitalist system is switching from allo-exploitation to auto-exploitation
+    in order to accelerate. On the basis of the paradoxical freedom it holds, the
+    achievement-subject is simultaneously perpetrator and victim, master and slave.
+    Freedom and violence now coincide.
+    
+    [...]
+    
+    The life of homo sacer in achievement society is holy and bare for another
+    reason entirely. It is bare because, stripped of all transcendent value, it has
+    been reduced to the immanency of vital functions and capacities, which are to
+    be maximized by any and all means. The inner logic of achievement society
+    dictates its evolution into a doping society. Life reduced to bare, vital
+    functioning is life to be kept healthy unconditionally. Health is the new
+    goddess.31 That is why bare life is holy.
+    
+    The homines sacri of achievement society also differ from those of the society
+    of sovereignty on another score. They cannot be killed at all. Their life
+    equals that of the undead. They are too alive to die, and too dead to live.