Untimely Meditations

1. The Agony of Eros

Byung-Chul Han

2. On Hitler’s Mein Kampf: The Poetics of National Socialism

Albrecht Koschorke

3. In the Swarm: Digital Prospects

Byung-Chul Han

4. The Terror of Evidence

Marcus Steinweg

5. All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse

Martin Burckhardt and Dirk Höfer

6. Positive Nihilism: My Confrontation with Heidegger

Hartmut Lange

7. Inconsistencies

Marcus Steinweg

8. Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese

Byung-Chul Han

9. Topology of Violence

Byung-Chul Han

10. The Radical Fool of Capitalism: On Jeremy Bentham, the Panopticon, and the Auto-Icon

Christian Welzbacher

Topology of Violence

Byung-Chul Han

Translated by Amanda DeMarco

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

© 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Originally published as Topologie der Gewalt in the series Batterien Neue Folge by Matthes & Seitz Berlin: © Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Berlin 2011. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in PF Din Text Pro by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Han, Byung-Chul, author. | DeMarco, Amanda, translator.

Title: Topology of violence / Byung-Chul Han ; translated by Amanda DeMarco.

Other titles: Topologie der Gewalt. English

Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, [2017] | Series: Untimely meditations | Translation of: Topologie der Gewalt. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017026378 | ISBN 9780262534956 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262345057

Subjects: LCSH: Violence. | Power (Social sciences)

Classification: LCC HM886 .H34513 2017 | DDC 303.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017026378

ePub Version 1.0

d_r0

Table of Contents

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Introduction

I The Macro-physics of Violence

1. The Topology of Violence

2. The Archeology of Violence

3. The Psyche of Violence

4. The Politics of Violence

5. The Macro-logic of Violence

II The Micro-physics of Violence

6. Systematic Violence

7. The Micro-physics of Power

8. The Violence of Positivity

9. The Violence of Transparency

10. The Medium Is the Mass-age

11. Rhizomatic Violence

12. The Violence of the Global

13. Homo liber

Introduction

There are things that don’t disappear. Violence is one of them. Modernity is not distinguished by an aversion to violence.¹ Violence is simply protean. It varies its outward form according to the social constellation at hand. Today it is shifting from the visible to the invisible, from the frontal to the viral, from brute force to mediated force, from the real to the virtual, from the physical to the psychological, from the negative to the positive, withdrawing into the subcutaneous, subcommunicative, capillary and neuronal space, creating the false impression that it has disappeared. It becomes completely invisible at the moment it merges with its opposite, that is, with freedom. Martial violence is currently giving way to an anonymized, desubjectified, systemic violence that conceals itself as such because it becomes one with society.

The Topology of Violence first addresses the macro-physical manifestations of violence, which take the form of negativity, developing in the relationship of tension between self and other, interior and exterior, friend and enemy. Typically these manifestations reveal themselves as expressive, explosive, massive, and martial. They include the archaic violence of sacrifice and blood, the mythical violence of jealous and vengeful gods, the sovereign’s deadly violence, the violence of torture, the bloodless violence of the gas chamber, and the viral violence of terrorism. But macro-physical violence can also take a more subtle form, expressing itself as verbal violence, for example. Like physical violence, the violence of hurtful language is still based on negativity, since it is de-famatory, dis-crediting, de-grading, or dis-avowing. The violence of negativity differs from the violence of positivity, which arises from the spamification of language, excessive communication and information, and the accumulation of language, communication, and information.

Today’s society increasingly divests itself of the negativity of the other or the foreign. The process of globalization accelerates the dissolution of borders and distinctions. Yet the depletion of negativity should not be equated with the disappearance of violence, since along with the violence of negativity there is a violence of positivity, which is wielded without enmity or domination. Violence isn’t merely an excess of negativity; it can also be an excess of positivity, the accumulation of the positive, which manifests as overachievement, overproduction, overcommunication, hyperattention, and hyperactivity. The violence of positivity is possibly even more disastrous than that of negativity because it is neither visible nor evident, and it evades immunological defense because of its positivity. Infection, invasion, and infiltration—which are characteristic of the violence of negativity—now give way to infarction.

The late modern achievement-subject is free, in that it does not encounter repression on the part of sovereign entities external to itself. But in reality it is just as unfree as the obedience-subject. Once exterior repression is overcome, pressure builds within. Thus, the achievement-subject develops depression. The violence persists unabated. It merely shifts to the interior. The stages of the topological transformation of violence are decapitation in the sovereignty society, deformation in the disciplinary society, and depression in the achievement society. Violence is increasingly internalized, psychologized, and thus rendered invisible. More and more, it rids itself of the negativity of the other or the enemy, becoming self-referential.

Note

1. When Jan Philipp Reemtsma speaks of the aversion to violence and the delegitimation of violence in the modern, he has only raw, corporeal violence in mind. He does not take note of systemic violence or more subtle forms of violence. See Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Vertrauen und Gewalt (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2008).

I The Macro-physics of Violence

1. The Topology of Violence

The Greeks called torture ἀνάγκαι. Ἀναγαῖος means necessary or indispensable. Torture was perceived and tolerated like fate or a law of nature (ἀνάγκη). Here we have a society that sanctioned physical violence as a means to an end. It was a society of blood, distinct from the modern society of the psyche. In it, conflicts were resolved directly through the use of violence; that is, resolution was enforced. External violence unburdens the psyche because it externalizes suffering. The psyche doesn’t antagonize itself with endless internal discussion. In modernity, violence assumes a psychic, psychologized, internalized form. It takes on intrapsychic forms. Destructive energies are not directly, affectively discharged but rather worked through psychically.

Greek mythology is drenched in blood and strewn with dismembered bodies. For the gods, violence is a self-evident, even natural, means of achieving their goals and asserting their wills. Thus Boreas, the god of the north wind, justifies his violent course of action to woo Orithyia: So Boreas … tried / To win by pleading, and accomplished nothing / With all his gentleness; then his natural manner, / Rough anger, rose up in him, the wind of the north, / And he growled and blustered: ‘This is what I get, / What I deserve! I have thrown down my weapons / Fierceness and violence and angry spirit / Fine things to exchange for prayers! What use are they / To me? How unbecoming! Violence / Is my right weapon. …’¹ Ancient Greece was also a culture of fervor. It is characterized by intense emotions that take on violent form. The boar that kills the beautiful youth Adonis with its tusks embodies the violence inherent in this culture of fervor and emotion. After Adonis died, the boar is supposed to have said that it in no way wanted to injure him with its eroticized teeth (ἐρωτικοὺς ὀδόντας) but rather simply wanted to caress him. This paradox would ultimately be the ruin of the culture of emotion and drives.

In premodernity, violence was ubiquitous, and above all both mundane and visible. It was a significant component of social practice and communication. Thus it was not merely wielded but also expressly put on display. Rulers exhibited their power through deadly violence, through blood. The theater of brutality that was staged in public spaces also demonstrated the ruler’s power and magnificence. In this context, violence and its theatrical staging contribute significantly to the wielding of power and domination.

In Roman antiquity, munera meant service performed for the public good. A munus is also a gift that is expected of someone occupying an official post. One of the munera is the munus gladiatorium. The gladiator battle itself makes up only a part of the munus gladiatorium.² Far more brutal than these battles were the midday executions that preceded them. Along with damnatio ad gladium (death by sword) and damnatio ad flammas (death by fire), there was also damnatio ad bestias. Criminals were thrown to hungry predators, to be mangled alive. The munus gladiatorium wasn’t merely entertainment for the masses, intended to satisfy their aggressive drives. Rather, it exhibited an inherent political significance. In the theater of brutality, the power of the sovereign stages itself as the power of the sword. Thus the munus gladiatorium was an important component of the imperial cult. The ostentatious staging of deadly violence demonstrated the ruler’s power and magnificence. The ruling order employed the symbolism of blood. Brute violence functioned as an insignium of power. In this context, violence did not conceal itself. It was visible and manifest. It had no shame. It was neither silent nor naked but rather eloquent and signifying. In archaic culture as well as in antiquity, the staging of violence was an integral, even central component of societal communication.

In modernity, brute violence was delegitimized not only on the political stage but also in nearly all other social milieus. It has lost virtually every show-place. Executions now take place in spaces to which the general public has no access. Deadly violence is no longer placed on display. The concentration camp is also an expression of this topological change. It is no showplace for execution because it isn’t located in the center but rather at the edge of a city. The theater of bloody violence, which characterizes the society of sovereignty, yields to a bloodless gas chamber withdrawn from public view. Rather than staging its magnificence, violence conceals itself in shame. It continues to be wielded, but not publicly staged. It does not expressly draw attention to itself. It lacks all language and symbolism. It heralds nothing. It takes place as a mute annihilation. Muslim is a slang term from concentration camps referring to a victim of violence, a violence that has already become shameful, is perceived as a crime, and that renounces itself. Following its delegitimation, the sovereign’s deadly violence exits the public sphere as a place. The camp is a non-place. In this sense it is different from the prison, which still is part of a place.

The end of the premodern society of sovereignty as the society of blood subjected violence to a topological transformation. No longer did it form a part of political and societal communication. It withdrew into subcommunicative, subcutaneous, capillary spaces within the psyche. It shifted from the visible to the invisible, from the direct to the discreet, from the physical to the psychic, from the martial to the medial, and from the frontal to the viral. Its mode of operation was no longer confrontation but contamination, not open assault but concealed infection. This structural change in violence increasingly determines its occurrence today. Terrorism doesn’t focus its destructive powers frontally either but rather disseminates them virally in order to operate invisibly. And cyberwar, the war form of the twenty-first century, also operates virally. The viral nature of