Chained to the Digital Camp: review essay of Byung Chul Han’s Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power

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Abstract

Capital thrives on chaos and the ‘libidinization’ of value. Its ceaseless self-reinvention is systemically violent; it grinds habit, destroys existential territories and deracinates stability. The working of capital is like that of a RIP [radically invasive projectile] bullet. Small, compact and elegantly shaped, a RIP doesn’t just penetrate the body. It triggers a series of explosions yet cannot be removed from the body without dismembering it. The aesthetic and affective tools of late capitalism – easification, gamification and that forever-out-of-reach-remaining ‘final gratification’ or ‘added value’, which, after a century of advertising, is experienced as deserved in all spheres of life: wealth, talent, even looks – are similarly smooth yet deadly. Agent-lessly, they produce automated misery.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMedia Theory
VolumeOctober 2018
Publication statusPublished - 18 Oct 2018

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