The Burnout Society

Product Information

Han, Byung-Chul (2017) [2012 in German]. The Agony of Eros. Translated by Butler, Erik. Foreword by Alain Badiou. London: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262533379. LCCN 2016031913. Good Entertainment: A Deconstruction of the Western Passion Narrative (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2019) ISBN 0262537508

Harm does not come from negativity alone, but also from positivity—not just from the Other or the foreign, but also from the Same. Such violence of positivity is clearly what Baudrillard has in mind when he writes, “He who lives by the Same shall die by the Same.” 4 Likewise, Baudrillard speaks of the “obesity of all current systems” of information, communication, and production. Fat does not provoke an immune reaction. However—and herein lies the weakness of his theory—Baudrillard pictures the totalitarianism of the Same from an immunological standpoint:Q. How do you reconcile a society that tries to homogenize us with people’s growing desire to be different from others, to be in a certain way, unique? Brazilian Portuguese edition: Sociedade da Transparência, Vozes, Petrópolis, 2017 ISBN 9788532654717.

This is a book that demands a little thought from the reader, but the writer carefully sets up his idea, with each section drawing us further on. Han starts most parts by looking at other thinkers’ ideas, but he’s certainly not afraid to contradict them. A good example is his examination of Hannah Arendt’s claims that we’ve given up our individualism and become cogs in the machine, leading to a society too jaded and exhausted to think. Han’s counter-claim is that we’re too full of ego; it’s the dual role mentioned above, that of being our own boss and underling simultaneously, that has us frazzled.

Byung-Chul Han studied metallurgy in Korea before he moved to Germany in the 1980s to study Philosophy, German Literature and Catholic theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich. He received his doctoral degree at Freiburg with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger in 1994. In 2000, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Basel, where he completed his Habilitation. In 2010 he became a faculty member at the HfG Karlsruhe, where his areas of interest were philosophy of the 18th, 19th and 20th century, ethics, social philosophy, phenomenology, cultural theory, aesthetics, religion, media theory, and intercultural philosophy. Since 2012 he teaches philosophy and cultural studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), where he directs the newly established Studium Generale general-studies program. The Expulsion of the Other: Society, Perception and Communication Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018) ISBN 1509523065 Books and knowledge) 'Society of Tiredness' author Han Byung-Chul and Do-ol Kim Young-oak meet]. JoongAng Ilbo. 24 March 2013 . Retrieved 30 May 2018.