Byung-Chul Han: Contemporary subjectivities and new forms of domination from digital spaces

Abstract

The present article discusses the ideas of South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han about the configuration of contemporary subjectivities from a critical perspective to determine the forms of domination from the digital spaces in present day societies. For this purpose, it will review the theoretical and philosophical thesis of Han, for later, contrast them with the critical theory, foremost, the negative dialectic of Theodor W. Adorno. It will show how the Han’s analysis can’t go beyond the domination, prefiguring the extinction of the negativity, and therefore, nullifying any possibility of resistance and contestation from the subject harmed by the capitalistic logic. The critical response to Han’s view about the actualization of the utopia of capital, where the concrete finally is subsumed by the domain of the abstract, is built upon the idea of John Holloway and Sergio Tischler about how to rethink the category of the non-identical. Even when the present article doesn’t exhaust the thesis of Han, nor the full scope of his oeuvre, it seeks Byung-Chul han: suBjetividades Contemporáneas y nuevas formas de dominaCión desde los espaCios digitales163 to open the discussion about the emergence of new subjectivities in the threshold of the digital technology and the loss of what is human, particularly, in relation to the digitalization of life and the overexploitation of emotions by the Capital.