Byung-Chul Han Quotes on Politics
Han's series of short books — The Burnout Society, The Transparency Society, Psychopolitics — diagnose contemporary neoliberal subjectivity rather than the institutional politics of representation. The thesis is that disciplinary power, theorized by Foucault, has given way to a positive achievement-society in which subjects exploit themselves voluntarily under the imperative of self-optimization. The corresponding political pathologies — depression, exhaustion, narcissistic withdrawal — are not contingent malfunctions but structural features of a regime that has dissolved the distinction between freedom and compulsion.
Quotes
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“The achievement subject exploits itself; it is at once master and slave in one person.”
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“Today's crisis is not the depression of the negative but the exhaustion of the positive.”
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“Power that operates through freedom is the most efficient form of power.”
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“The disappearance of rituals coincides with the disappearance of community.”
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“Violence and freedom are the two endpoints on the scale of power.”
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“The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.”
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“Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion.”
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“A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement.”
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“Often what is absent has more power than what is present.”
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“When power is separated from any communicative context, it becomes naked violence.”
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“Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time.”
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“Architecture is a way for power to achieve eloquence through form.”
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“Rather, power is most powerful, most stable, where it creates a feeling of freedom and where it does not need to resort to violence.”
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“Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent.”
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