Byung Chul Han: The Burnout Society

Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society, published in 2015, was his first popular book of philosophy and social theory published in English. In The Burnout Society, he lays out the themes, insights and arguments that would be repeated and expanded in nearly every popular book he’s written since then.

You might be tempted to start with the last chapter (title track), “Burnout Society”, but if you do, let me warn you that I found it a somewhat confusing statement of his general argument. Every element of his argument is there but in nascent form, which was refined in his later works, particularly Psychopolitics. 

In this chapter, one confronts his statement of the culture of “sameness” or “the Same”. This would seem to imply that one chooses to never encounter anything different from oneself, but that’s a misunderstanding. What Han means by “the Same” is the tendency to translate everything one encounters into something reflecting some aspect of the Self; likewise, to discredit or ignore that which does not reflect the Self. This quote from Richard Sennett on p. 38 is the clearest I’ve seen in all his works:

Self-absorption does not produce gratification, it produces injury to the self; erasing the line between self and other means that nothing new, nothing “other,” ever enters the self; it is devoured and transformed until one can see oneself in the other—and then it becomes meaningless…Looking always at an expression or reflection of oneself…one drowns in the self.”  (pp. 38-39)

This passage is a reference to narcissism which Han speaks of repeatedly in all his books. He considers narcissism to be the primary personality disorder of neoliberal capitalism. Further, he identifies the neoliberal “flexible” personality, a chameleon who can adapt to any social situation and any occupation, as expedient for neoliberal capitalism:

In positive terms, such a human being without character is flexible, able to assume any form, play any role, or perform any function. This shapelessness—or, alternatively, flexibility—creates a high degree of economic efficiency. (p. 41)

The flexible personality corresponds with the flex-time labor of just-in-time production that characterizes late capitalism. Han relates these general social conditions to the phenomena of burnout, typified by depression:

Depression—which often culminates in burnout—follows from over-excited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive traits. The exhausted; depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to speak. it is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself.  (p. 42)

Han links the culture of narcissism with New Media, its ability to create virtual ‘unrealities’ where the narcissist never confronts a contradictory reality:

In virtual spaces, the ego can practically move independent of the “reality principle”, which would provide a principle of alterity and resistance. In all the imaginary spaces of virtuality, the narcissistic ego encounters itself first and foremost. Increasingly, virtualization and digitalization are making the real disappear, which makes itself known above all through its resistance. (p. 43)

Likewise, social media friendships and romantic relationships become vehicles for affirming the self: In social networks, the function of “friends” is primarily to heighten narcissism by granting attention, as consumers, to the ego exhibited as a commodity. “ (p. 43). Here again, Han links the neoliberal narcissist to its corresponding political economy, which he expands upon in Psychopolitics. Han describes the kind of self-destructive violence that neoliberalism produces:

The late-modern achievement-subject is subject to no one. . . It positivizes itself; indeed it liberates itself into a project. However, the change from subject to project does not make power or violence disappear. Auto-compulsion, which presents itself as freedom, takes the place of allo-compulsion. This development is closely connected to capitalist relations of production. Starting at a certain level of production, auto-exploitation is significantly more efficient and brings much greater returns than allo-exploitation, because the feeling of freedom attends it. The achievement-subject exploits itself until it burns out. In the process, it develops auto-aggression that often escalates into the violence of self-destruction. The project then turns out to be a projectile that the achievement-subject is aiming at himself. (p. 47).

As I think along these lines, I inquire about the role of contemporary Western Buddhism in the neoliberal capitalist society. Does Buddhism as such correct this narcissistic tendency, or does it in fact exacerbate it? My experience has been that the primary subject of contemporary Buddhism is the Self, even in a religion that adamantly insists that there is no ‘self’. It is the neoliberal Self that walks into a meditation hall to learn to ‘end it’s suffering.’ Yet everything that is undertaken in this practice is meant to attend to the ‘self’, heal the ‘self’ of its trauma, calm and sooth the ‘self’, and redirect the ‘self’ away from ‘self-aggression’ through affirmations of kindness, compassion, non-judgement toward ‘self.’. 

Perhaps this is a more insightful critique of McMindfulness, although I’ve never heard any of its protagonists define it that way—Zizek included. Rather, the McMindfulness critique focuses on the way that contemporary Buddhism helps people adjust to the demands of brutal competition in the corporate sphere, the mental taxation of multi-tasking environments, excessive demands for work and flexibility, and as a way to relieve anxiety and restore the energy of the over-worked employee. While that is all valid in its own way, Han’s analysis goes deeper to what I feel is the heart of the problem: the neoliberal subject who has become her own project, who exploits herself to the point of exhaustion and burnout. We have been trained, culturally, to “be all we can be”, to narcissistically drive ourselves to the goal of perfection and super-achievement, yet we self-aggressively loathe ourselves in the process, and suffer with shame that we have (always already) failed at the project. 

Now in addition to being super successful, creative, healthy and socially adjusted, we must also become fully enlightened Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Is there a different way to do Buddhism that instead counteracts the culture of narcissistic over-achievement?