What Drives You? Some Thoughts on Psycho-Politics
Are we perhaps exploiting ourselves? Byung Chul-Han addresses this in Psychopolitics – Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power.
Han has captured my most intrusive thoughts: all this for what? We have all interiorised the desire to self-optimise, to become the “best version of ourselves” (to quote every self-help author). He sheds some light on the Why.
Somewhat anti-climatically, the answer is Power. But not just any power – the neoliberal regime has shifted the definition of power from one that is defined by Repression, to one that is defined by Liberation. Insidiously, this is all but an illusion.
Perpetual self-optimisation, as it turns out, is simply a highly efficient mode of self-exploitation. He puts it best: “the neoliberal subject is running aground on the imperative of self-optimisation. That is, on the compulsion to always achieve more.” At this juncture one might wonder: is all this really that bad?
Han proposes that freedom incurs debt, not just in the literal 30 trillion dollars in US debt, but also physiological debt: after all, psychic maladies like depression and anxiety do plague our times. And if it’s so bad, why do we all seem to continually hop on this toxic, hedonic treadmill? Drawing from Deleuze and Foucault, it is because we have interiorised the power relations of docility-utility. We have become our own Panopticon in how we derive pleasure from’ Likes’, ‘Followers’ and ‘Friends’, in how we push ourselves beyond the limit in every facet of human endeavour.
Crucially, how shall we salvage ourselves? Han says just be an idiot, a heretic, an idiosyncratic moron. Why? Because etymologically, heresy means ‘choice’. And within this choice exists our instrument of liberation: the heretic is the one who commands the courage to deviate from the orthodoxy. Idiotism stands opposed to the neoliberal power of domination: total communication and total surveillance.
And yet, here I am, writing this review, clinging on to the hope that there is another solution than complete withdrawal from society. Maybe conformity isn’t always subjugation? Or maybe I’m just trolling.
