Byung-Chul Han Thread

[Anonymous No.11751067]

This just arrived in the mail. What am I in for, and how are the rest of his books? I also summon girardfag to the thread. I know you're there!

[Anonymous No.11751148]

I've also been meaning to read this. I understand he builds off foucault's biopolitics but what else should one have read beforehand?

[Anonymous No.11751503]

>tfw when summoned

you're in for a solid critique of neoliberalism by a brilliant guy who has actually done all of the reading of the continentals. Burnout Man.

>As psycho-disciplines, they are orthopaedic in nature. In contrast, the neoliberal technology of power does not exercise disciplinary coercion. Electroshock’s mode of operation differs fundamentally from that of neoliberal psychopolitics. Electroshock owes its efficacy to paralyzing and annihilating the contents of the psyche. Its essential trait is negativity. In contrast, neoliberal psychopolitics is dominated by positivity. Instead of working with negative threats, it works with positive stimuli. Instead of administering ‘bitter medicine’, it enlists Liking. It flatters the psyche instead of shaking it and paralyzing it with shocks. Neoliberal psychopolitics seduces the soul; it preempts it in lieu of opposing it. It carefully protocols desires, needs and wishes instead of ‘depatterning’ them. By means of calculated prognoses, it anticipates actions – and acts ahead of them instead of cancelling them out. Neoliberal psychopolitics is SmartPolitics: it seeks to please and fulfil, not to repress.

he's diagnosing what is pathologically wrong with the very same societies of control that deleuze talked about: *they want to be loved.* and, in fact, they will demand it by way of soft totalitarian coercive power. you may have heard much of this before from the frankfurt school, zizek, fisher or baudrillard; you will hear it again from han. and if han is the first continental writer you have encountered, he is a pretty darn good jumping-off point to read the others, with the added bonus that a) he is up to speed on what's going on now, and b) he has absolutely no interest whatsoever in big-time Marxist revolution, so you're not being set up for disappointment.

i really like this guy. not because any of it is groundbreaking or new, but because he's for realsies and not a fucking stooge. he knows exactly what the stakes are and how all of these control systems operate. no illusions. the hanpill is an unsugared one and that is exactly why i like him. i like him. it's a good book and a good example of why continental philosophers aren't all bewildered fucking nutjobs who can't cope. han can cope perfectly well. and he's still unimpressed. he's based.

[Anonymous No.11751559]

>>11751503
he also understands what is wrong with foucault's critique of biopolitics:

>In fact, the blind spot in Foucault’s analysis is the technology of power under the neoliberal regime. Foucault did not see that the neoliberal regime utterly claims the technology of the self for its own purposes: perpetual self-optimization – as the exemplary neoliberal technology of the self – represents nothing so much as a highly efficient mode of domination and exploitation. As an ‘entrepreneur of himself’, the neoliberal achievement-subject engages in auto-exploitation willingly – and even passionately. The self-as-a-work-of-art amounts to a beautiful but deceptive illusion that the neoliberal regime maintains in order to exhaust its resources entirely.

>Under neoliberalism, the technology of power takes on a subtle form. It does not lay hold of individuals directly. Instead, it ensures that individuals act on themselves so that power relations are interiorized – and then interpreted as freedom. Self-optimization and submission, freedom and exploitation, fall into one. Such engineering of freedom and exploitation, which occurs in order to effect self-exploitation, is what escaped Foucault.

how can you not like this guy? and he even gets the hollowness of the outrage that follows from this:

>Han argues that private life is crumbling with the virtualization of the self. From here, he moves on to the “shitstorm,” which, as an “authentic phenomenon of digital communication,” differs from such quaint forms of protest as barking on the street corner or writing a letter to an editor or congressman. The individual acts of virtual outrage composing the shitstorm — the carping message board comment, the nasty tweet, or the backbiting post on Facebook — are not a prelude to engagement, but instead an occasion of “immediate affective discharge” in an environment that “favors symmetrical communication.” This means, in essence, that online condemnation responds less to the dialogic criteria of suasion than to the base pleasure of dealing a cheap shot — in many cases, under cover of anonymity — with no concern for whether the target is a stranger, a celebrity author, or the president of the United States.

>Outrage, in Han’s view, draws attention efficiently but lacks the stability and constancy required for successful intervention in the public sphere. Masses marshaled to the purpose of public shaming lack a commitment to a course of shared action. Outrage is an end in itself, and its targets are inevitably granular, so that the power relations that structure individual grievances at their core persist through the shitstorm unaltered.

source:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/media-and-transparency-an-introduction-to-byung-chul-han-in-english/

burnout, the stupidity of rage culture, critique of neoliberalism. plus hegel, heidegger, lacan, and the rest of the gang. how can you not love this?

[Anonymous No.11751610]

>>11751503
Thank you for showing up. I also have In the Swarm and The Burnout Society being delivered tomorrow. Would you say Han is the most relevant contemporary philosopher today, and does discuss what the anon describes as "slam-leftism" in my pic? I have been intrigued by signage and mimesis since.

[Anonymous No.11751701]

>>11751610
>Would you say Han is the most relevant contemporary philosopher today?
he's certainly up there. *things have changed since the 80s and 90s.* this isn't derrida's or foucault's world anymore. neoliberalism isn't just broken, it's fucking dead and fermenting and tainting the water supply. and for a contemporary analysis of what's wrong with it han is a really good guy to read.

there's a bunch of guys who are worth reading today (and i'm assuming we mean only living ones). sloterdijk, land, virilio (he's still alive!), agamben, zizek, badiou, stiegler, yuk hui...obviously i don't know any analytic ones, only continentals. but this is why han really stands out for me, he's read all the big guys. he knows his hegel, nietzche, heidegger, lacan, deleuze...the big guys who inspired those other guys. he's legit! he's the real deal. and if you're getting introduced to these ideas, a good writer like han can really shine a light not only on contemporary issues, but what those earlier thinkers have to contribute to them.

so i don't know about the most relevant, but he's one of my favorites, and talking about things that really are relevant, current issues, and doing so in a way which i think is very accessible. there's a lot of stuff to read, and it can be intimidating. but it's so rewarding once it becomes familiar. it really is. like, to realize *it's not all in your head.* that other people can see the weirdness, the stupidity, the cynicism too. i'm glad there's a guy like him saying this stuff.

>"slam-leftism"
i think he would simply understand it as being pathological. bret weinstein has noticed a similar phenomenon, that groups of protestors would show up at his classes with no idea why they are there, but still having flow-chart answers to everything. han could probably write a whole book about it, how the protest and the outrage is simply another form of psychopower. it's completely programmed, it's the designated, state-sanctioned form of rage (and, to my mind, it's part of the cultural apparatus that makes Woke Capital). but you probably want more of what his opinions would be on this, and not mine. i think he would just recognize that this rage is of an unusually predictable form that, more than anything, reveals a fidelity to the system of psychopolitics rather than any form of challenge to it. capital and corporations pick up on all these signals in the end. you could call it Facebook Rage, completely pure, utterly holy and innocent. and incredibly shallow.

[Anonymous No.11751707]

what's a criticism of the lad you have
your posts seem too obsequious at times

[Anonymous No.11751764]

>>11751707
yeah, i know. i get sentimental sometimes.

for criticism? well, it's not especially new. apart from that his doctorate was written on heidegger, i don't know what you could say his really "original" contributions are. the burnout society comes to mind, but i more or less realized how burned out i was on my own.

i only discovered han fairly recently, and after reading a lot of the other guys, and so it's not like i encountered anything in his work that i hadn't read before. heidegger, lacan, and deleuze all gave me the Holy Fuck Jesus Christ feeling that you will get from reading the big guys. tastes vary, of course, but each of those guys left me feeling as though i had woken up on another planet. fundamental metaphysics/ontology will do that to you. now to criticize han for not giving that same feeling is a little bit unfair, not only because he comes along later in the game, but also because we may not even need anything really New on that level.

it's why i compare him to franco berardi (who isn't, imho, quite as interesting either). you get from reading han the experience of reading a solid continental philosopher writing what solid continental philosophers do. he's not going to tear up the foundations of the universe (marx) or propose metaphysics that will fundamentally change the way you look at time, space, language, and so on (kant, hegel, heidegger). he's not going to propose an eerie new trajectory for human beings (stiegler, land). and he's not going to make you want to drop everything and say fuck it, why did i ever leave the greeks (sloterdijk, nietzsche, plato). he's not in that territory. and after a while the things he writes do become somewhat familiar.

but again, it kind of depends on whether or not you have read this kind of stuff before. i've been stewing in these swamps for a while. baudrillard kind of destroyed any faith i had in mass culture, as did virilio, zizek, lots of others. i just kind of habitually read this stuff. han is a very good author of the kinds of texts that i liked, and that's why i shill for him. but in terms of truly rewiring the way you look at reality, no, he doesn't do that.

[Anonymous No.11751800]

yeah thanks for post
i've read them too--we're on a similar page, i think. i've been meaning to read his book on shanzhai and probably will

[Anonymous No.11751858]

>>11751764
Where do Beradi and Han differ? I've considered picking up Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide, bit I get a vibe that he discusses similar concepts in The Burnout Society, which I haven't read yet: feeling like you are trapped in a hopeless situation and "knowing" you are responsible for it, yet can't quite shake the feeling the system of others are to blame, but in any case, there is no escape nor a cathartic outlet within reach, so you just keep it inside and not tell anyone and do the best you can to carry on.

[Anonymous No.11751889]

>>11751858
yeah, i mean, that's pretty much it.

but, berardi is an italian marxist, he's much more politically active and engaged. from what i understand, practically nobody knew han existed outside of a small group. and then he released a couple of books and everybody was wondering who he was. berardi is apparently more well-known and active within marxist circles. marx connects all the dots in continental philosophy, but he's not as important for han, iirc.

of berardi's stuff i read the soul at work and some other stuff. it was good, in the way that continental texts are. you're moved. but, of course, it's so late in the day now that you're not moved very far when it comes to talking about alienation and how much our souls have become completely colonized by neoliberalism. we know this, and that there is probably very little that can be done about it in the meantime (if at all).

i mean, things are going to happen. historically, politically, all the rest. but so much of what we are talking about is just so much arguing in the master's language. that feeling you are describing is pretty much the same feeling i had, and in the case of han i found it delivered a little better. but it is pretty much the same stuff, which is the criticism i was offering.

nobody anywhere really knows what to do about the hopelessness. to his credit, han sticks with the burnout. and, as i said, i like him for that reason. he's not fucked out because there's no revolution, he's saying, hey, i can keep up with the world and be a good professional academic. and i'm still disappointed by it. here are my thoughts, i think all of this stuff is bullshit. and he's right.

but, conversely, italy has always been a place where interesting political things happen first, or ahead of the germans, anyways. so, we'll see.

i forgot to add to that list of philosophers above who really floored me: the chinese, too. if it matters. those guys are also good for getting by in the absence of the cathartic outlet.

[Anonymous No.11751972]

>>11751067
my impression of BCH is that he's a philosophical lightweight adept at forming a collagework of existing (mostly post-war French) theory but offers very little in the way of new thought. the books I've read were pamphlet length, half of which consisted of quotations and explanations of obvious concepts (as if readers aren't familiar with Panopticism). the language is grandiose, the concepts sweeping. i have the same problem with Virilio, though I like him more as an architectural / design theorist.

[Anonymous No.11752289]

One of the rarest of an actual informative civil non-meme discussion thread in /lit/

[Anonymous No.11752453]

>>11751764
Girardfag where are you based

[Anonymous No.11752486]

>>11751858
>>11751889

Berardi is pathetic, be free to skip him. There is nothing 'intellectual' about him at all, only sentiment about muh capitalizm. Well fed and comfortable pseudo leftists.

[Anonymous No.11752489]

What about this?

The Question Concerning Technology in China
An Essay in Cosmotechnics
Yuk Hui

[Anonymous No.11752914]

>>11751858
Heroes is better among Berardi's output. Limited to a particular case study (school shooters) he is able to produce a more compelling diagnosis of alienation and its apparent societal causes. It's important to consider his milieu, though - the damp squib of nihilistic BR terrorism in the 70s, the masturbatory excesses of Operaismo and its theorists, Negri being a wonk, etc. Berardi is better than the lot of them, in that sense he's the tallest man on the short bus.

>>11751972
I found the explanatory stuff in some of BCH books a bit annoying, but I don't think he's a lightweight, he just writes more clearly and without as much jargon as a lot of the other continentals, and where there is jargon it is, as you say, explained clearly to the point of seeming obvious. I prefer his honesty and simplicity. It means he might not seem like a big brain meme to an undergrad, unlike Derrida or Deleuze, but I think the insights about the mechanisms of societies of control, techonlogy, their effect on subjects and then how subjects pathologise them are pretty good.

[Anonymous No.11753017]

>>11752453
the land of leaves, for now.

[Anonymous No.11753153]

>>11752486
This. Berardi is a big disappointment.

[Anonymous No.11753952]

>>11753017
are you canadian?

[Anonymous No.11754060]

>>11752489
that's a really good book by another interesting guy.

>>11753952
i am indeed. canada is a nice country but philosophically kind of meh. we have this cool guy, charles taylor, and more recently JBP. george grant i guess for some old-fashioned red toryism. probably some other peeps laboring in total obscurity, somewhere. and atwood.

[Anonymous No.11754150]

>>11751503
>>11751889
OP here, I see what you mean how he is good intro to Foucalt, Deleuze, and others, and I like how he defines terms explains concepts without the jargon, but he does at times dumb it down to the point of being Wikipedia-ized summaries, unfortunately. I also didn't find his description on the relationship between surveillance, transparency, and digital technology to be that enlightening since I've pretty much figured that out on my own (without the term transparency), right down do the analogy of social media as Panoptica. I'm not finished with Psychopolitics yet, but despite my criticisms, I am enjoying it.

Also, have you read the Agony of Eros? The topic of love is something philosophers rarely discuss., and I've also noticed, at least among my peers, guys want to marry a "me with tits, a pussy, and more hair," and I wonder if Hans concept of sameness has something to say about it?

>i forgot to add to that list of philosophers above who really floored me: the chinese, too. if it matters. those guys are also good for getting by in the absence of the cathartic outlet.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I were to take my spirituality seriously, buckle down and read the stacks of Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist texts along with Guenon and Evola I've been collecting (acquiring more books than reading is a terrible habit of mine), learn Hindi, Sanskrit, or Chinese to the point where I feel competently fluent, and leave my friends, family, possessions, and student loans behind to live in a monastery for the rest of my life. It's not like my current and future prospects are any better.

[Anonymous No.11754252]

>>11754150
>OP here, I see what you mean how he is good intro to Foucalt, Deleuze, and others, and I like how he defines terms explains concepts without the jargon, but he does at times dumb it down to the point of being Wikipedia-ized summaries, unfortunately. I also didn't find his description on the relationship between surveillance, transparency, and digital technology to be that enlightening since I've pretty much figured that out on my own (without the term transparency), right down do the analogy of social media as Panoptica. I'm not finished with Psychopolitics yet, but despite my criticisms, I am enjoying it.

that's it, he diagnoses the situation without proposing a solution. which in itself actually makes his analysis more sober and clarifying, because he's not just becoming steadily more and more remote, for example, like baudrillard, or hammering away at hegel and lacan (zizek), or pining for a restored class consciousness, and so on. it is like wikipedia - Hanpedia! - and that's basically it. you now understand the pros and cons of this yourself.

>Also, have you read the Agony of Eros? The topic of love is something philosophers rarely discuss, and I've also noticed, at least among my peers, guys want to marry a "me with tits, a pussy, and more hair," and I wonder if Hans concept of sameness has something to say about it?

i did, i'll have to go check it again to give a better response. lots of philosophers do talk about love, it's just that sometimes the conversation about love is eclipsed by the metaphysics of desire. lacan is a good example, the subject of love sometimes horribly anatomized by reading it through kant and sade. of course there is more to the story than this! and i've seen schopenhauer described as the philosopher of romance and love also, although i've always found this to be a little bit weird. philosophers are often fucked up by women.

>Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I were to take my spirituality seriously, buckle down and read the stacks of Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist texts along with Guenon and Evola I've been collecting (acquiring more books than reading is a terrible habit of mine), learn Hindi, Sanskrit, or Chinese to the point where I feel competently fluent, and leave my friends, family, possessions, and student loans behind to live in a monastery for the rest of my life. It's not like my current and future prospects are any better.

i don't know much about thomas cleary's personal life but i think he must have known something about this. he's been translating rare books from the east for decades, and they're all really good. i don't think he has an academic post, and he doesn't seem to give a lot of interviews or be a big well-known public intellectual. but i've read a lot of books that were translated by him and he's made a really wonderful contribution to philosophy in that way. i'm sure if you decided to pursue a monastic route, even for a short time, it would be really rewarding.

[Anonymous No.11754266]

someone else is reading the notre dame church life blog here i see

[Anonymous No.11755321]

>>11754266
Hm what's that? Sounds interesting.

[Anonymous No.11755364]

>tfw still not up there yet to understand Girardfag

[Anonymous No.11756036]

>>11755364
fuck girardfag, he's a pseud
>t. girardfag

nobody really knows anything, anon. we have intuitions, fears, fantasies and stupid dreams. we're along for the ride. some of these things obsess me and that is /lit/erally all i do here, reveal the nature of my fixations and neuroses and the plastic brain in which they live. some authors i think really nail the patterns that the butterflies in my stomach float in.

it is nothing more than that. never was. i never really planned on spending this much time reading this stuff, i think i just had a screw loose in my head that gave me a weird tendency to struggle with normativity. sometimes it makes for interesting conversation, a lot of the time it just makes my life difficult because i obsess about things that the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about because there is no reason for it to give a shit about it. there are more important things for people to do. there are probably more important things for me to do. i just tend to prefer dwelling on some things.

i am in no way a person to emulate. philosophy hasn't made me wiser, and it's debatable whether or not it's even made me happier. it has confirmed some suspicions that i had, about the mysterious je ne sais quoi moments of life and polite society. for those things - things that i learned from girard, heidegger, lacan - i'm really grateful, because they reminded me that other people had noticed these things too. that's been a relief, and from time to time i've been lucky enough to have shared some of this stuff with other people and found that they went, hey, that's neat. i noticed that too! that gives me a good feeling. but there's no mystery or profundity in this. no great wisdom. at least not on my end. the mystery box is empty.

have you ever read the passion of the western mind? it's such a good book.

[Anonymous No.11756050]

BUNG-HUL CHYNA

[Anonymous No.11756980]

I read it earlier this summer, very quick and worth the time.

[Anonymous No.11757024]

>>11751067
This man, in my country he is everything.

[Anonymous No.11757165]

>>11756036
Just finished reading the Gamification chapter, and for slightly unrelated reasons, it has got me thinking about the new NPC meme. It's a new addition to the "life as a game" of memes. First, there was the "dude, we are living in a simulation/The Matrix lmao," and then there was the "life hack" as a term for a shortcut or workaround for daily and commonplace rituals. What these terms are really saying is life is less than itself and less real than it is, and life is something to be "won" (and I just remembered the phrase "winning at life"), but it ultimately doesn't matter because it's a game. But really, life is all there is, and to think otherwise is deluding yourself: escapism. That's what Gamification is, escapisim. Now, there is an uglier term of gamified life: the NPC. The term signifies two things, you are the "player" or hero/protagonist of not just your life, but life itself, and the only one who has any agency. The second signifier is it dehumanizes the Other as the NPC, the mouthbreather, the meatbag, the prole, the sheeple. To think of people as NPCs is not only escapist, but also solipsistic and dehumanizing.

[Anonymous No.11757460]

>>11757165
>it ultimately doesn't matter because it's a game
Isn't it more that things only matter within a game? It's then by the fact that the game is not real, and life is the real outside the game, that life is made not to matter. Then every moment away from life, inside the game, is a moment outside the tacit don't-cares which are the things we resign to. I heard Mr. Z saying once that once you lose the wife, you lose the mistress and the dream of the mistress also; it sounds fitting.

[Anonymous No.11758212]

>>11757165
the world of games and culture is a huge thing. i find myself thinking about it a lot, especially since video games have become so much a part of mainstream cultural life. it's an operable film, it's a text that you edit as the player/viewer.

but just as we took our cues about behaviour from cinema in an earlier era, we do it now at another level with games. there's no question at all that it comes back to shape the way in which we engage reality.

it's funny, i don't even hear the word escapism anymore. what i hear about constantly is *politics,* but in this age of hyper-awareness we find also that the political Real is even more strange and virtual and culturally programmable than our fantasies. i think you hit on something interesting:

>The term signifies two things, you are the "player" or hero/protagonist of not just your life, but life itself, and the only one who has any agency. The second signifier is it dehumanizes the Other as the NPC, the mouthbreather, the meatbag, the prole, the sheeple. To think of people as NPCs is not only escapist, but also solipsistic and dehumanizing.

it's how we look at each other, sometimes, across the divide. people who us seem to be deluded, to be living in a virtual reality always open to our criticism, but this is why criticism is a double-edged sword.

>What these terms are really saying is life is less than itself and less real than it is, and life is something to be "won" (and I just remembered the phrase "winning at life"), but it ultimately doesn't matter because it's a game.

it's a pretty good portrait of despair, isn't it? everything becomes cheap and operable, but, as you say, it doesn't matter anyways.

i like baudrillard a lot and i think he's prescient when it comes to talking about how reality disappears behind its signs and symbols. but there's a horizon beyond which further irony, alienation, and parody - however warranted - only leaves one feeling more and more lost and alone.

i'm reading about imperialism now and thinking about strategy games, about how they simulate economic processes of capital functions at a level beyond anything you can get from watching a film, and i'm finding it quite interesting. games work on reality at a level that actually can get beyond spectacle by turning over the controls to you, the player-actor-director. we *work* with games on a deep level. they can even be good way for learning about things, to some degree. but there's no question this eventually shapes how we see reality and engage in it.

[Anonymous No.11759166]

>>11758212
Done with 'Big Data' and aaaaaaahhh fuck me! The shit he says about the Quantified Self, the absolute ignorance brought by big data, along with the death of spirit, and the "Ban-opticon" are the kind of shit Rene Guenon, Marty Glass, and Ted Kaczynski would say. It's one thing to hear them say it, but when you have a academician, who's books have been translated in 11 languages, you know things are fucked!

[Anonymous No.11759209]

>>11759166
What book are you reading?

[Anonymous No.11759243]

>>11751067
Read a bit of burnout society, stopped after I understood it was not for me right now.

Have yet to read Heidegger and whatnot

[Anonymous No.11759408]

>>11759209
The OP
>>11759243
I don't think being familiar with Heidegger is required to read it. From reading Psychopolitics, Han does explain concepts when they are necessary, and everything else he covers aren't that complex to grasp.
>>11757024
Where are you from?

[Anonymous No.11759416]

>>11759166
yeah, he's got one of the best How Bad Things Are faces ever.

he critiques foucault but there's a kind of an interesting parallel in there. he doesn't give the impression that More Criticism is what is required, or that power discursivity really has any more fruit left to bear, precisely because that is what capital incorporates within itself and turns against you: the conversion from Big Brother into Big Sister, and which is truly insidious. because now positivity - including the critical, 'emancipatory' positivity of critique - belongs to the society of control. but, it's enough to simply call a spade a spade, sometimes.

so things are fucked, but perhaps this is just a space between one epoch and another. han is definitely more blackpill than redpill in that sense. but all of these critiques are valuable for showing where systemic or structural flaws lie. i actually do believe there will be a kind of neo-enlightenment on the other side of a lot of this stuff. but for now it's enough to just exit the matrix, even if there's no Secret Revolutionary Base at the core of the earth to go to.

[Anonymous No.11759567]

>>11759416
Hey girardfag, what's your ideas on beauty?

[Anonymous No.11759673]

>>11759567
this feels like it would warrant a whole other thread. you know i've been accused of being a notoriously self-absorbed Thread Derailer in the past.

anyways, what a question! this is like the ultimate question of questions. i hardly know where to begin. i mean i guess one that thing that comes to mind is actually considering these ideas of beauty from a kind of scientific perspective, sometimes. not in order to do absolutely everything that would appal heidegger, or anything like this. but for us to consider beauty as a product of technical proficiency and skill as well as aesthetics, if we are as a civilization just resolved to hate and be dissatisfied with everything, turn everything into an Instagram Moment, &c, &c.

in other words, assorted other crusty bitterness can be skipped over here. because the thing is, if reading heidegger's perspective on aesthetics does not give you the shivers, then i don't know what to say. to me he is absolutely the guy on that subject. it's why i refer to him so much: if it's an aesthetic world (for now), and feels > reals, heidegger is must-read, run don't walk, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

again, i'm not saying this because i want to go Full Positivism (but i have been reading some auguste comte these days, so perhaps that is rubbing off on me). but because, i mean, we live in a world governed by aesthetics, seduction, and eudaimonia. there is a horizon beyond which the critique of ideology just no longer is helpful, since all we wind up doing is producing politicized art and propaganda, and building ourselves societies which are peculiarly obligated to conform to the standards of life as seen on TV. the kind of stuff that causes don draper to become an alcoholic wreck (and, by the way, holy shit is Mad Men ever a good show.)

but there are other phenomena too worth thinking. why is it that *buying things alleviates the desire?* i have tons of books that, when i see them on the shelf, i think, i have to have this. then some unusual moment occurs when the red light beeps on the bar code, and that object loses all of its mystery and becomes mine - that is, just another disenchanted book i won't read, in a pile with the others. walter benjamin understood this also, how *aura* functions.

and now here we are, having gained all simulation (sometimes a good thing) and massively deprived of authenticity.

so, i've got lots of thoughts on that stuff. but for art and beauty i think i defer to heidegger mainly. i think he's a master aesthetician in that regard.

[Anonymous No.11759720]

>>11751067
I've read three books from him, Psychopolitics, The Expulsion of the Other and In the Swarm. His analysis and his critics on the whole social digitalization of the self is truly accurate. Also I'm currently reading his book on zen buddhism, brilliant and lucid philosopher without doubt.

[Anonymous No.11759742]

>>11759673
have you ever walked through a mall and just not bought anything? because it's a good feeling, sometimes.

purchasing things really does deprive them of their enchanting power. i'm definitely Instant Gratification Man, i always have been. and my compulsions to need or want or own or simulate things is a thing that i've sort of trained myself to pay attention to. draper knows this as well (as did baudrillard): the secret of seduction is that you can't have that thing, it eludes you. but we also do ourselves a disservice by taking the sour grapes approach.

at least in film studies, one of the best writers i've read on the mystery of some of these things was warshow. his essay on the gangster as tragic hero is one of the best pieces of criticism i've ever read. warshow observes that there is a peculiar tendency in us, as moviegoers, to obtain a kind of sad delight from watching the gangster fail and suffer, to be destroyed by the same set of unfair rules that oppress us. it's a brilliant piece of criticism.

http://www.andreelafontaine.com/american-subcultures/the-gangster-as-tragic-hero-by-robert-warshow-1948

it's why hermeneutics really matters. critique of ideology and pop-culture dissection probably really was fun (and historically necessary) during the 60s to the 90s, but that age is manifestly over now. for one thing, art today sets itself up in advance to be deconstructed, and for another, the monolithic kind of criticism that is now presented (and i'm amazed that it has come to this) doesn't have any of the necessary charity or hermeneutic sympathy that is actually required. maybe it's because the art itself is trash, or because the critic simply has a lack of imagination, or any number of other factors.

and it's also because one of the most interesting fields of artworks today, those being videogames, still lack really good critics. there are one or two, but there's a huge amount of stuff looking at in vidya that is worth exploring.

anyways. we're fucking swamped by it. and capital knows it, it knows that nobody is really immune to seduction or ideology. that to me would be a huge perspective shift, the turn to mimesis and away from criticism as a first principle. we are always implicated in what we see, and there is no outside perspective on this, even in deconstruction. whole new world.

>>11759720
i should really order that one on zen.

[Anonymous No.11759814]

>>11759673
>>11759742
Thanks for the answers, friend. I asked because I've been ruminating on beauty and its place on social organization recently and a bunch of other theoretical shit concerning it, which I sadly don't have the time to expound here; though I don't think it's the right place, but if OP doesn't mind and you (singular or plural) would be interested, I could go on onto it tonight itt.

I just wanted to run some stuff past you, to know what has and hasn't failed.

[Anonymous No.11759878]

>>11759673
>this feels like it would warrant a whole other thread. you know i've been accused of being a notoriously self-absorbed Thread Derailer in the past.
>>11759814
>though I don't think it's the right place, but if OP doesn't mind and you (singular or plural) would be interested
OP here, I don't mind having a discussion with girardfag on other topics, as long as we make sure the thread doesn't get deleted.

[Anonymous No.11759989]

>>11759814
my pleasure! and i'd certainly give your ruminations a read or discuss further if you like. if it touches on these kinds of issues and themes, those are already things i'm definitely intrigued by. but it sounds like you probably need to create a new separate thread for it.

>>11759878
>OP here, I don't mind having a discussion with girardfag on other topics, as long as we make sure the thread doesn't get deleted.

yeah, i really don't want to make it all about me or give the impression that i'm some kind of unhinged lunatic.
>i am a kind of unhinged lunatic, i just don't want to give the impression

i just noticed this was out on libgen as well. the man is a machine! there's too many good books to read these days.

[Anonymous No.11760005]

>>11759878
Thanks OP.

>>11759989
I might right it down later and put it on a pastebin so I can post it whenever for you without being to obstrusive.

[Anonymous No.11760086]

>>11751067
How do Baudrillard connects with this guy?