Thursday, October 13, 2016

Since social control to self-exploitation


Some time ago I was read an interesting article of an southkorean philosopher called Byung-Chul Han, he has written characterizing current society, based on the proposals of two other authors. On the one hand, Foucault and his concept of "Disciplinary societies" characterized by controlling behavior through vigilance and institutions, power is exercised by structuring the parameters and limits of thought and practice, through prescription and punishment. Later, on the other hand, Deleuze proposes that society was evolving to "Control societies", where can do without the physical limits of confinement and shaping of subjects, thanks to communication tools such as press or statistics such as civil registration.

In this context Byung-Chul Han introduces the concept of "Society of performance", where the subject doesn't suffer from an external exploitation as in previous societies, but it is self-possessed but by internalizing patterns and social pressures the subject it exploit himself. In this process the person tends to do many activities at once, called "multitaskting", implying superficial attention constantly and a similar phenomenon to remain in alertness, which impides us attain deep thought or great achievements and cultural creations. This explains much of the time we are tired because we often force them to do things that really don't want, like going to the gym, college or shopping. And I think that these characteristics differ greatly today's society. Finally, there have always been dominant classes but these no longer are responsible for correcting physically, but through the implementation of an ideology we can dominate and impose ourselves.

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