It is thus apt that the English title of Han’s breakthrough book is The Burnout Society. Han insists that this kind of burnout is not the result of coercion, at least not in the usual sense. It does not result from an internalized “or else” injunction to achieve, from a disciplinary “should.” It instead results from an alluring “can.” “Prohibitions, commandments, and the law,” Han claims, “are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation.” Han illustrates this paradoxical sort of “positive violence” with a plea that the artist Jenny Holzer once blazoned on a Times Square billboard, a blasphemous statement in that great American shrine to the consumerist “can”: “Protect Me From What I Want.”
Review of Byung-Chul Han in The Lamp, which I finally gave in and subscribed to.