Blog Marcos L. Mucheroni Filosofia, Noosfera e cibercultura

After Surveillance and Punishment, Foucault realized that disciplinary society was not exactly what modern society reflected, as Byung-Chul Han’s book on Psychopolitics puts it, “the problem, however, was that it remained linked both to the concept of population and to that of biopolitics [quoting Foucault] ‘if once we know what this governmental regime called liberalism was, we can, it seems to me, grasp what biopolitics is’ (Han, 2020, p. 37).

Byung-Chul discovers that “disciplinary technique passes from the corporeal to the mental sphere. The English term “industry” also means “effort”. The locution industrial school can mean house of correction. Bentham also suggested that his pan-opticon would morally improve the inmates. Content, the psyche is not the focus of disciplinary power” (Han, 2020, p. 35).

The Korean-German essayist develops all the assumptions developed by Foucault to make the transition from biopolitics to psychopolitics, which he is right to do, but it is totally linked to the idea that it is the neoliberal principle and not the Hegelian one that establishes this logic of power, although both in the book What is Power and in the book In the Swarm, he examines other aspects ranging from technology to human behavior, for example, in the essay In the Swarm, he states that the only symmetrical form of power is respect.

In a more analytical way, he also considers idealist philosophy from a behavioral perspective:

“As in the relationship of knowledge (Kant), there is no continuity of the Ego, without the Alter, as he attests, by denoting that, power allows the ego to be in the other by itself. It generates a continuity of the self. The ego makes its decisions in the alter. This is how the ego continues in the alter. Power gives the ego spaces that are its own, in which, despite the presence of the other, it can be itself.” (Han, 2019, p. 11).

So it is necessary to escape from selfish, exclusivist concepts to penetrate a level of alter in order to fully realize our feelings and decisions, it is not an effort of the self nor of egocentric power that we achieve this state of peace and happiness so desired.

So inflamed egos, masters who seize power in order to dominate others, are unable to create a healthy policy that includes the whole of society and perhaps the whole of society, because it is not possible to live in harmony without respecting diversity, difference and the Other.

All totalitarian regimes are heading for war because they need to eliminate the Other, the different and the voice of those who see the world from a different perspective.

HAN, Byung-Chul. A Psicopolítica: o neoliberalismo e as novas técnicas do poder. Brazil: Petrópolis: Vozes, 2020. 

HAN, Byung-Chul. O que é Poder? Transl. de Gabriel Salvi Philipson. Brazil: Petrópolis: Vozes, 2019.