Читать книгу Psychopolitics - Byung-Chul Han - Страница 9

Power commands highly different modes of appearance. Its most direct and immediate form finds expression as the negation of freedom. This enables power-holders to impose their will against the will of those subject to power – by violence, if need be. However, power is not limited to breaking down resistance and forcing obedience. It need not take the form of coercion. Power that relies on violence does not represent power of the highest order. The mere fact that another will manages to form and turn against the power-holder attests to the latter’s weakness. Wherever power does not come into view at all, it exists without question. The greater power is, the more quietly it works. It just happens: it has no need to draw attention to itself.

To be sure, power can express itself as violence or repression. But it is not based on force. Power need not exclude, prohibit or censor. Not does it stand opposed to freedom. Indeed, power can even use freedom to its own ends. Only in its negative form does power manifest itself as a violence that says ‘no’ by shattering the will and annulling freedom. Today, power is assuming increasingly permissive forms. In its permissivity – indeed, in its friendliness – power is shedding its negativity and presenting itself as freedom.

Disciplinary power is still commanded by negativity. Its mode of articulation is inhibitive, not permissive. Because it is negative, it does not describe the neoliberal regime – which beams forth in positivity. The neoliberal regime’s technology of power takes on subtle, supple and smart forms; thereby, it escapes all visibility. Now, the subjugated subject is not even aware of its own subjugation. The whole context of domination (Herrschaftszusammenhang) remains entirely hidden. Consequently, the subject thinks itself free.

Inasmuch as it expends a great deal of energy to force people into the straightjacket of commandments and prohibitions, disciplinary power proves inefficient. A significantly more efficient technology of power makes sure that people subordinate themselves to power relations on their own. Such a dynamic seeks to activate, motivate and optimize – not to inhibit or repress. It proves so effective because it does not operate by means of forbidding and depriving, but by pleasing and fulfilling. Instead of making people compliant, it seeks to make them dependent.

Power that is smart and friendly does not operate frontally – i.e., against the will of those who are subject to it. Instead, it guides their will to its own benefit. It says ‘yes’ more often than ‘no’; it operates seductively, not repressively. It seeks to call forth positive emotions and exploit them. It leads astray instead of erecting obstacles. Instead of standing opposed to the subject, smart and friendly power meets the subject halfway.

Smart power cosies up to the psyche rather than disciplining it through coercion or prohibitions. It does not impose silence. Rather, it is constantly calling on us to confide, share and participate: to communicate our opinions, needs, wishes and preferences – to tell all about our lives. Friendly power proves more powerful, as it were, than purely repressive power. It manages not to be seen at all. Today’s crisis of freedom stems from the fact that the operative technology of power does not negate or repress freedom so much as exploit it. Free choice (Wahl) is eliminated to make way for a free selection (Auswahl) from among the items on offer.

Smart power with a liberal, friendly appearance – power that stimulates and seduces – is more compelling than power that imposes, threatens and decrees. Its signal and seal is the Like button. Now, people subjugate themselves to domination by consuming and communicating – and they click Like all the while. Neoliberalism is the capitalism of ‘Like’. It is fundamentally different from nineteenth-century capitalism, which operated by means of disciplinary constraints and prohibitions.

Smart power reads and appraises our conscious and unconscious thoughts. It places its stock in voluntary self-organization and self-optimization. As such, it has no need to overcome resistance. Mastery of this sort requires no great expenditure of energy or violence. It simply happens. The capitalism of Like should come with a warning label: Protect me from what I want.