In the first part of the book Han looked at the older obvious forms of violence and set up the conceptual tools to understand the shift from a disciplinary society to an achievement society; from the negative to the positive expressions of violence; form the visible to the invisible application of violence; and from the physical to the psychic forms of violence. In the second part of his book, entitled The Micro-physics of Violence, Han looks at the more subtle but pervasive forms of violence in our current achievement society.
Systematic Violence
First, Han critiques two other closely related concepts of violence: structural violence and symbolic violence. The notion of structural violence involves the recognition that a ruling system’s structures in the social system can cause injustice, unequal power relation, and unequal opportunities. However, Han believes this notion is better covered under his notion of negative violence and wants to be more precise in isolating the evils of positive violence: “The negativity of privation is fundamental to structural violence, preventing a fair distribution of resources and opportunities. This conception of violence is too general. It doesn’t capture the aspect that actually defines violence and distinguishes it from other negative social influences. The fact that working-class children have worse educational opportunities than upper-class children isn’t violence but rather injustice. If violence is used as shorthand for general social negativity, the contours of the idea become hazy.” Often injustice goes with violence but it is not necessarily so that they always go together. The notion of structural violence “fails to grasp the difference between power and violence.” For example, these days most ruling hierarchy are based on power not violence but it is clear that hierarchies can create injustice without violence. So called “Structural violence is not violence in the strict sense of the word. Rather it is a rulership technique. It makes it possible to rule discreetly and much more efficiently than ruling by violence.” The notion of symbolic violence, or the habit of accepting the rule that is, “stabilizes power relations very effectively because it makes them seem natural, like a fact that is questioned by no one, something that is-the-way-it-is.” This notion is not violence in the sense that Han would like to consider; it is also a technique of power to rule without violence.
Both of these concepts can’t get past the negative model of violence; the model that uses domination, and force, sets up walls, is disciplinary, and has a privileged in-group versus an underprivileged out-group. Systematic violence, positive violence, occurs without any of these outside forces; without in- or out-groups; but affects the whole of society. “…the society of achievement knows no class or gender differences. ‘Top dogs’ are affected by the demand for performance and optimization just as ‘underdogs’ are. All members of society are affected by burnout.” “As violence of positivity, systemic violence completely lacks the negativity of restraint, rejection, prohibition, exclusion, or deprivation. It manifests as immoderation and amassment, as excess, exurbanization, and exhaustion, as overproduction, overaccumulation, overcommunication, and excess information. Because of its positivity, it is not perceived as violence. It is not only too little that leads to violence but also too much, not just the negativity of prohibition but also the positivity of the ability to do everything.”
The traditional immunological model deals perfectly with negative violence because there is the in-group versus the out-group but it cannot help us make sense of the positivity of violence which is too much of a good thing and therefore not considered other – not considered a threat. Each one of us as entrepreneurs of the self are our own exploiters in an achievement society. “Today people increasing react to this surplus of the same and excess of positivity with a psychic abreaction. Psychic bulimia ensues. It is not an immunological answer to negativity because excess of the same does not trigger the immune system. Thus the violence of positivity is possibly more calamitous than the violence of negativity.” Positive violence can be worse than negative violence because negative violence is obvious and engenders opposition but positive violence is self-exploitation that presents itself as freedom and therefore goes unnoticed to our psychic detriment.
The Micro-Physics of Power
Han credits Michele Foucault for developing the notion of the disciplinary society and the micro-physics of power which refers to all the manifold ways and means that power is exercised (not possessed) in a disciplinary society such as by all the dispositions, maneuvers, tactics, techniques, and functionings in the network of power relations that produce the discipline of the people. But he criticizes Foucault on not seeing the significance of three points he makes. 1) Foucault claims that if there is ever to be progress then power needs to defused more. However, power in the real world tends to concentrate – with the occasional changing of hands from one group to another that interrupts the concentration trend temporarily. Han argues that power has defused totally. That the existing visible power relations are tiny compared to the generalized, defused, self-exploitative, power relationship of achievement society. To complain about the visible unjust power relationships today is like complaining about a racist micro-aggression in a world with institutionalized slavery. The positive power and violence imposed on people today far out does the negative power imposed on people. 2) Foucault claims that torture was a truth generating technique that was very highly regulated and codified. “Thus [Foucault] thinks of torture in terms of the production of truth, without considering its internal economy of violence and pleasure.” Foucault failed to see the pleasure of torture and its subsequent adoption by everyone on themselves in an achievement society. Consider the similarities in pleasure a professional torture of the past may have felt to enter the profession with how much pleasure we take in torturing our bodies with work-out and diets for the sake of health today. 3) The decriminalization of suicide was viewed by Foucault as the natural result of rebellion against authority. One who commits suicide is robbing their sovereign (God or King) of their right over one’s life – a serious challenge to the sovereign. But with suicide’s growing legalization, one is free to choose one’s time and means to leave the world. Yet, Foucault misses that this act of freedom is a quintessential example of violence against the Self merging with freedom. Han’s notion of achievement society with its auto-exploitation and auto-violence is also characterized by the highest rates of suicide in history from depression and burnout.
Han further criticizes Foucault’s disciplinary society and notions of biopolitics for not being able to account for labour, concentration, and death camps. “The deadly violence of the camp stands in opposition to the biopolitical economy, which aims ‘to invest life through and through.’” The camp was a “non-place” of violence on the fringes of society. Modern achievement society is becoming a global labour, concentration and death camp. “Foucault’s disciplinary society of prisons, hospitals, jails, barracks, and factories no longer reflects contemporary society. A society of glass office towers, shopping malls, fitness centers, yoga studios, and beauty clinics long ago took its place….The imperative for performance transforms freedom into compulsion….Here, violence and freedom coincide, making violence self-targeting….Burnout is the pathological emanation of this paradoxical freedom….its pathological symptom is depression.”