Psychopolitics

An unsettling and penetrating critique of Neoliberalism and its structures of control. Han argues that under the data-mediated “psychopolitics” of the current Late Capitalist order in the West, the individual person oppresses themselves through gamified, emotional devotion to achievement and self-improvement. We become an “achievement-subject” that self-subjectifies. Unlike the Disciplinary society outlined by Foucault, the Neoliberal society is focused on positive reinforcement and the pleasure principle. The Disciplinary society features biopolitics and physical control, while under Neoliberalism the society operates through psychopolitics and emotional management/exploitation.

Han also brings in notions of horizontality and verticality. He points out that Neoliberalism's most optimistic hopes for Big Data will certainly fail to come to fruition, because Big Data is an entirely horizontal framework. This echoes the use of these terms by Wolfgang Smith. It could be said that Big Data can only deal in horizontal causality: the predictable and observable unfoldment of cause and effect. It cannot foresee what Han calls the event: the unpredicted, unforeseeable occurrence. The event is the result of what Smith would call vertical causality, a causation which preempts and supersedes the horizontal development of situations, which he said was only accessible by Humanity and God. Both Wolfgang Smith and Byung-Chul Han would agree that computers and algorithms have no access to this sense of verticality, and so cannot predict or comprehend the event, or totalize knowledge to the degree that would make it visible through computation.

Finally, Han argues that a possible position to hold in revolt of this psychopolitical regime is that of the philosophical, Socratic “idiot.” For Han, this specific idiot is the one who presumes nothing and doubts more than seems reasonable, such as Socrates and Descartes. The idiot remains outside of the anticipatory cycle of the emotionalized market, and so this philosophical idiot is a radical, whose existence is a problem for the logic of Neoliberalism. Han argues at the end of this work that taking on this position of ‘idiocy' is potential way to reclaim freedom and de-subjectivize oneself.

It's an interesting and very thought-provoking work that I think successfully reframes and clarifies our situation today, moving beyond limited ideological positions and is well worth the read. While it is short, under 100 pages, it is very dense and rewards thorough, engaged reading.