​A short but dense book. Han describes the expulsion of the negativity of the Other in contemporary society, leaving only the positivity of the Same. The expulsion of the Other, rather than being understood as a clearly delineated concept, can be understood more as a modality of our neo-liberal capitalist society mediated by hyper-communication in the age of social media, big data, and a highly developed information and communications technology ecosystem.
 
Han uses a variety of themes and theoretical traditions to describe the contemporary modality that exists with the expulsion of the Other. I provide a quick overview of some of the ideas. Individuals under neo-liberalism lack an experience of profound anxiety and boredom, which would force an evental reckoning and open up a new horizon for Being; instead, there is “ontological indifference” (p. 31).  Neo-liberalism subjectivizes individuals and submits them under the imperative to authenticity, forcing individuals to produce themselves as a commodity. As a commodity, individuals compete and are compared with others; as individuals strive to differentiate themselves, they become same Others, instead of atopic, incomparable Others. The compulsion to authenticity is a narcissistic compulsion that leads to depression and self-harm; self-love and self-harm are connected: “To escape this torturous emptiness today, one reaches either for the razorblade or the smartphone” (p. 25). As individuals actively self-commoditize, they are alienated not only from their work, but also from themselves, expressing “itself pathologically as a disorder of body image” (p. 39) and resulting in anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating.
 
Han describes the digital world as one largely devoid of the presence of the Other. The digital world is gapless, lacking generative thresholds (think rites of passage). Digital worlds lack the materiality and the negativity of objects (counter-bodies; ob-jeter) and the bodily experiences of the voice and gaze of the Other. For Han, the digital space is “a digital echo chamber in which subjective spirit encounters nothing but itself” (p. 60), where the presence of the Other is eliminated. There is no experience with the uncanny, the wonder of art and philosophy, that liberates “the Other from the categorial web of subjective spirit” (p. 60). Instead, the gapless space of the digital world suppresses silence, suppresses language; instead of a “poetics of attentiveness” we have an “economy of attention” (p. 64).
 
Han uses a generative immunological metaphor to sound out the expulsion of the Other in the social body. The negativity of the Other in the social body is like an infection that promotes antibodies. Without the Other, there is only the positivity of the Same; the excess of the Same leads to adiposity and an accumulation of fat—binge eating—for which there are no antibodies. Instead of communication, there is only accumulation; binge-watching and binge-eating share similar roots. Contemporary society is not a repressive society, where an external, negative force prohibits, forbids, and denies individuals; instead, it is one that exploits freedom and liberates the subject to produce itself authentically, as a commodity. The digital space mediates the new permissive society, instead of the repressive gaze of a disciplinary society, digital spaces are immersed with gazeless, aperspectival screening.
 
Han ends the book with a chapter on listening. In a society full of noise, Han writes that it is the listener who is “a resonance chamber in which the Other speaks themselves free” (p. 71). Listening is an act of caring for the other, an act of participation in the existence of the Other, of feeling the suffering of the Other. By listening, we move from the time of the self, a time marked by the logics of productivity and efficiency, to the time of the Other, a time of de-production, of community, and a time of celebration. 

​A Mishimaesque character study. The novel follows the widow Etsuko, who accepts her father-in-law's invitation to join the family in the multi-generational family home in rural farm country Maidemmura; she later becomes the father-in-law's mistress. Her father-in-law, the widowed patriarch Yakichi, was an upper class executive. He has three sons, whose families live with him. Kensuke, the oldest, is sickly, indolent, and cynical, and lives with an admiring Chieko; Yusuke, the youngest, is in Siberia, and leaves behind a wife and daughter; finally, there is Ryosuke, the middle child and deceased husband of Etsuko. Living with the family are their servants Miyo and Saburo.

The family exists as a bubble in Maidemmura--they are rich transplants from Tokyo and exist in a separate social and economic milieu with distinct mores, tastes, accents, and behaviours. They have an understated disdain for the other rural inhabitants in Maidemmura. Mishima details the familial politics that happens in the bubble; there is gossip, particularly on the side of Kensuke and Chieko, and providing a refracted image of Etsuko through their discussions.

Etsuko is also made known through the narrative and descriptions—"Etsuko walked as if she were pregnant. It was an ostentatiously indolent walk" (p. 7, this perhaps refers to Etsuko's violation of social norms of propriety for a woman in Japan in that age)—and the reader's privileged access to her own inner monologue. One interesting application of the latter is on page 16-17, when we read Etsuko's diary along with Yakichi and his peeping eyes—what is written in the diary is a foil and a disguise for Etsuko's actual thoughts (this reminded me of James Scott's hidden transcript). Mishima also makes use of the flashback (this is a cinematic convention brought into literature, as per critical commentary on Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night) to describe Etsuko's failed, loveless marriage with Ryosuke. Her marriage is a story of desperate attachment to a cheating husband; the husband is later rendered helpless due to typhoid (which for Etsuko, becomes an opportunity) and dies a gruesome death.

Etsuko's thirst for love attaches itself to the young, handsome, and vital Saburo, who comes from the countryside to work as a farmhand on Yakichi's property. Saburo is close to nature and uncorrupted by urban life, much like the lovers in Mishima's Sound of Waves; however, unlike the two lovers, being "undeveloped" manifests in an absence of any ideas about love. The reader is offered access to his thoughts at certain points in the novel and they are unremarkable. He has none of the urbanite Etsuko's sophisticated accumulations about love and longing; he exists as an object of desire.

Mishima teases the reader by keeping mum about the nature of their romance: the novel begins with Etsuko's purchase of two woolen socks (is this a gift to a lover?), describes Etsuko's encounter with Saburo in a green plot of land by a creek (the spot of their first romantic tussle?)—these hints are concluded by Mishima's explicit denial of his suggestions, a variation of "nothing happened."

Etsuko, calm and collected, is later captured by jealousy, turning shrill, uncontrolled, and vengeful—the novel ends in Mishimaesque fashion, in a puddle of violence: love is bound to death, blood bound to desire.