The Expulsion of the Other by Han Byung-Chul (2016)

​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. 

---