Byung-Chul Han

Should has a limit.

But whose blows have struck true love so low? The perpetrators are contemporary individualism, the effort to determine the market value of everything, and the set of monetary interests that now govern all conduct.

it is the radical experience, perhaps to the outermost point, of the existence of the Other.

critique of society must therefore provide a hermeneutics of pain. If pain is left to medicine, we neglect its character as a sign.

critique of society must therefore provide a hermeneutics of pain. If pain is left to medicine, we neglect its character as a sign.

The palliative society and the performance society coincide.

The palliative society and the performance society coincide.

Louise Bourgeois set a new record for a gigantic sculpture – thirty-two million for her work from the nineties, Spider. Even a gigantic spider can apparently be more decorative than threatening.’6 In the works of Ai Weiwei, even morality is presented in such a way as to inspire likes. Morality and likeability enter into a happy symbiosis. Dissidence decays into design. Jeff Koons, by contrast, creates like-worthy art that is morality-free, and ostentatiously decorative. The only adequate response to his artworks, as he himself states, is ‘Wow’.7

The passivity of suffering has no place in an active society dominated by ability. Today, pain cannot be expressed. It is condemned to be mute. The palliative society does not permit pain to be enlivened into a passion, to be given a language

the post-industrial and post-heroic age, the body is neither outpost nor means of production. Unlike the disciplinary body, the hedonistic body, which likes and enjoys itself without any relation to a higher purpose, develops a hostile attitude towards pain. To the hedonistic body, pain appears wholly senseless and without purpose.