I’m no Weber, but I take personal encouragement from his story. His professional collapse was not the last word. After he quit his job, he undertook his most influential work. Greek edition: Η ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΠΑΡΗΓΟΡΙΑΣ. Athens, Opera publications, 2021, ISBN 978-618-5400-26-2. Han is the author of more than twenty books, the most well known are treatises on what he terms a "society of tiredness" ( Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), a "society of transparency" ( Transparenzgesellschaft), and the concept of shanzhai (山寨), a style of imitative variation, whose roots are, he argues, intrinsic to Chinese culture, undermine the distinction often drawn between original and fake, and pre-exist practices which in Western philosophy are called deconstructive. This theme is explored in detail in The Burnout Society , a short work dating from 2010. Han begins by introducing the idea of a society based on the language of immunology, with life revolving around the self and others, the familiar and the alien. What this meant is that in politics and society people acted very much as our bodies do when an infection is detected, isolating and annihilating the threat; as a result, anything not forming part of the whole is automatically part of this threat (here Han gives the example of Cold War rhetoric). You’ll note the use of the past tense here, and this is because the writer believes that this was a 20th-century concept and that we’ve moved on (to which I can only say Trump, Brexit, refugees on Manus Island … ). The basis of all of the above is the underlying idea that we’re free and that it’s up to us to seek personal fulfillment. After all, we’ve been told that we can be anything we want to be and nothing is beyond our reach. For the same reason, we set unrealistic standards for ourselves and push ourselves to the absolute limits to meet them.

Bitte Augen schließen. Auf der Suche nach einer anderen Zeit. Matthes & Seitz Berlin 2013 ebook, ISBN 978-3-88221-064-4. Burnout syndrome has 2 dimensions. The first is exhaustion, the physical and mental drainage caused by rapid expenditure of energy. The second is that of alienation, feeling like the work you’re doing is meaningless and it doesn’t really belong to you. With the expansion of the system of production comes an ever-increasing narrowness of functions to be filled by workers.Müdigkeitsgesellschaft will soon be available in 19 languages. [13] Several South Korean newspapers voted it to be the most important book in 2012. [14] The Guardian wrote a positive review of his 2017 book Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, [15] while the Hong Kong Review of Books praised his writing as "concise almost to the point of being aphoristic, Han's writing style manages to distill complex ideas into highly readable and persuasive prose" while noting that "on other occasions, Han veers uncomfortably close to billboard-sized statements ("Neoliberalism is the 'capitalism of' Like), which highlights the fine line between cleverness and self-indulgent sloganeering." [16] The Los Angeles Review of Books described him as "as good a candidate as any for philosopher of the moment." [17] By combining quotations from great philosophers and elements of popular culture, Han’s latest book Undinge (or Nonobjects), which is yet to be published in English, analyzes our “burnout society,” in which we live exhausted and depressed by the unavoidable demands of existence. He has also considered new forms of entertainment and “psychopolitics,” where citizens surrender meekly to the seduction of the system, along with the disappearance of eroticism, which Han blames on current trends for narcissism and exhibitionism. From a malaise of boredom – driven to distraction by hyperattention – brews a society of tiredness; exhausted and apathetic.

Call for Papers: The Itinerant Shrine: Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Holy House of Loreto Q. French writer and mathematician Blaise Pascal said that: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” We live in a cult of productivity, even during what we call “free” time. You named it, with great success, the burnout society. Should the recovery of our own time be set as a political objective? Several thousand people commit suicide every year in South Korea. The main cause is depression. In 2018, about 700 school children attempted suicide. The media even talk of a “silent massacre.” By contrast, so far only 1,700 people have died of Covid-19 in South Korea. The very high suicide rate is simply accepted as collateral damage of the achievement society. No significant measures have been taken to reduce the rate. The pandemic has intensified the problem of suicide—the suicide rate in South Korea has risen rapidly since it broke out. The virus apparently also aggravates depression. But around the globe not enough attention is being paid to the psychological consequences of the pandemic. People have been reduced to biological existence. Everyone listens just to the virologists, who have assumed absolute authority when it comes to interpreting the situation. The real crisis caused by the pandemic is the fact that bare life has been transformed into an absolute value. Engaged employees are the best colleagues. They cooperate to build an organization, institution, or agency, and they are behind everything good that happens there. These employees are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work. They know the scope of their jobs and look for new and better ways to achieve outcomes. They are 100% psychologically committed to their work. And, they are the only people in an organization who create new customers.Here we see the final inversion of the object-subject relationship. If it was previously commonplace to believe that your material reality, your community, your economic status helped shape your identity, now this relationship is turned upside down. It’s you who determines your material reality and your economic status. The subject creates his own reality. 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. His wife, Marianne, later wrote that during this time he was “a chained titan whom evil, envious gods were plaguing”. He was irritable and depressed and felt useless; any work, even reading a student’s paper, became an unbearable burden. He ultimately took a two-year leave of absence from his university, after which he resigned and became an adjunct professor, loosely attached to academia, at age 39.