Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Geografando. Today we're going to discuss the work of an important author who occasionally appears on our channel, who isn't a geographer, but you know very well that everything related to philosophy, psychoanalysis, economics, and many other areas interests us greatly when it comes to thinking about space. So today we're going to discuss Bi Shuran's work in more depth, in more detail.
You see, we already have two videos on the channel about Bi Shuran, one discussing his work in a general context and another about*The Burnout Society*. Another book that, at some point, I also intend to work on in a more detailed manner with all of you. It so happens that his book*The Burnout Society*was the one that ended up having the most publishing success, right?
And because of that, it's a book that needs to be rediscovered. You all know very well that when a book becomes very famous, it ends up being summarized or mystified through very simplistic, very mechanical formulas, consolidating itself from certain schemes that often offer us an impoverished interpretation of reality, right? So, we continue our discussion regarding Bungo Churran, but now we are specifically working from this book, which is a slightly less known work, yet I believe it is a fundamental one, not only for us to comprehend Bungo Churran's thought, but, in a general sense, it is of great importance so that we may understand the dynamics of capitalism in its neoliberal phase better, especially with regard to the way in which power relations are structured and operate within our current society.
We will see how the idea of psychopolitics arises closely associated with a model of society that would follow what Michel Foucault called biopolitics. Therefore, Bung Churan manages to capture the essence of a new model of domination, whose function is no longer necessarily exercised over the surveillance of other bodies, as Foucault's biopolitics posited, which Bian will call a disciplinary society. That is, for Foucault, the relations of domination characteristic of his time—the mid- 20th century, the 50s, 60s, and 70s ( although Foucault, at the end of his life, was already beginning to observe a transformation in the sense that Bung Churan will present here)— fundamentally occurred in this disciplinary society through the surveillance of the other, through the monitoring of bodies, behaviors, and actions.
There was then a panopticon, as Foucault called it, right? Panopticon means what? Pantodopticon, vision, right?
Something that sees everything. So, there was this panopticon, which is actually simply a metaphor so that we can think about the control mechanisms of that society. And for Michel Foucault, this panopticon was represented by a watchtower.
The watchtower here, being in the center and having a 360º view, observes everything, sees everything, controls the flows, controls the behaviors, orders the position of the subjects. We will see that with psychopolitics this is transformed. The panopticon as a watchtower becomes incorporated into the subject's interior.
The panopticon becomes the subject's own mind. Therefore, it is impossible to speak of power, of power relations within capitalist society, without working with the concept of psychopolitics or related concepts, concepts that consider the existing relationship between psyche, power, politics, and subjects. It is a central element.
That is why I strongly defend the idea that today a geography that does not consider psychoanalysis cannot understand the dynamics of politics in a society. Because without understanding psychopolitics, it is impossible for us to move in any sense of understanding these power relations. Okay, this may still seem somewhat hermetic, difficult to understand.
So, to better understand, let's go straight to the text, let's dissect the text, because it's from the text that we can escape the simplistic schemes, as I initially presented to you. We will see in the depth of this author's discussion his weaknesses, his points, his perspectives on the topic. So, in this sense, nothing is more fair than, in fact, resorting to his text to be able to have some kind of discussion in this regard.
So, look, we have Biungan, psychopolitics, neoliberalism, and the new techniques of power. So, look, this idea of psychopolitics, it arises very much associated with this question of power, doesn't it? It arises in this sense as a manifestation of how power can gradually develop from the human psyche in this society and, of course, within the framework of what we recognize as the capitalist system.
And that's basically what we're going to try to understand: capitalism in its neoliberal phase and how certain power relations manifest themselves from it. So, let's go. So, look, let's take advantage of the opportunity on the back of the book, not necessarily reading it, but I can offer you a brief biography, right?
B Churan was actually born in South Korea and became a philosophy professor in Berlin, right? He went early on, like a kind of backpacker, right? He was sent from South Korea to Germany, both to study the language and to develop his knowledge, mainly in the field of exact sciences at the time.
And he discovered a passion that was already nothing new from South Korea: philosophy. So, he is primarily a contemporary author very concerned with certain issues that I would say fall into a few main areas. And let's say there are two main areas, right?
The issue of politics and the issue of aesthetics and its unfolding. So, he is actually a professor of philosophy of art, aesthetic philosophy in Berlin, right? So, within his thinking, these issues involving an aesthetic discussion are included, which, you see, is not a discussion that only deals with the work of art or with beauty, but with the conflicts that permeate culture, the interior of a culture, and being a way of relating to art in a society.
Aesthetics is often taken by Marxism in a sometimes shallow way, which often leads us to think of aesthetics from an impoverished point of view, which in fact it is not. So I think that Bung Churan brings an aesthetic complexity to his work, thinking of it in conjunction with politics, with critical theory, which is worth exploring. That said, he is a Marxist author.
I think it's difficult to confine Bung Churan's thought to Marxism. He is not a traditional Marxist. I would say that, although he is not actually that, he is very much related to a thought very close to the Frankfurt School, although he is not limited to that either.
I would say that he is, first and foremost, a very free thinker, whose influences are divergent, right? Hence, his theoretical perspectivism fits very much into Frankfurt School essay writing, but I would say that there are some very important philosophers in his thought, such as Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche , and Heidegger, who are a very big influence on his thinking, right? And Foucault, as one of those we will work with here at certain moments.
So, of course, Marx, although he doesn't cite Marx directly very often, but rather authors from the Frankfurt School. It's more like he cites Adorno or Walter Benjamin more frequently, among others, right? Bachelarda appears in large numbers in his work, and so on.
George Gamben, an Italian philosopher. And look, these are completely heteronomous philosophers, right? Very different from each other, philosophers who are in conflict.
And he uses those philosophers, taking them as a starting point to develop his own theory regarding the nature of society. So, yes, I see that it's in the conflict between all these philosophers that he mobilizes that he manages, almost dialectically, to find solutions, proposals for intervention to analyze this society in a very essayistic way. And then, of course, we continue here.
And look, we have the summary, but I would mainly like to discuss with you the crisis of freedom, this initial chapter. And in fact, the first subchapter, right, that we will see, is called, uh, Crisis of Freedom. The Exploitation of Freedom will be this subchapter.
Then follows a second subchapter called the dictatorship of capital. And at the end we have another subchapter called the dictatorship of transparency, making a reference to his book The Transparency Society, right? So we have three thematic blocks within this chapter.
It's a short chapter, just as Churhan likes to write. And we will analyze each theme as much as possible. Today starting with the first subchapter.
But I'd like to draw attention to this first moment in the book, this opening sentence, right, which says: "Protect me from what I want, Jenny Roser. " So, protect me from what I want. Here there's already an indication, right, of how the question of desire becomes central for us to somehow think about the idea of psychopolitics.
Some issue there involving desire, isn't there? The desire that, in neoliberal capitalist society, is a desire that we will see is cultivated, is produced and, more necessarily, as I think will become clear as we do some readings about a churan, this "what I want" often goes in the sense of uh an exploitation of one's own body, an incessant search uh to become the productive subject, the exhaustion of the body, isn't it? That is, it's as if the desire for productivity takes hold of one's own intentions and enslaves the body.
That's why, psychopolitics. We will see there, for example, how he will think in a very original way about the question of the master-slave dialectic in Hegel, which is central to understanding this book, and how he places the question of biopolitics in other senses today. So, continuing, the crisis of freedom, I would like to say that, in fact, I didn't make the notes that are marked here, right?
I didn't highlight them, right? I didn't highlight them; I took the text from the internet, so it necessarily came highlighted. But I believe, from what I've read, that these highlights help us even to think, but we won't limit ourselves to them, right?
So let's go. The crisis of freedom, the exploitation of freedom. Starting then, Churran tells us: "Freedom will have been episodic, an episode in the sense of an interlude, a connection between parts.
" So, freedom emerges as a connection between parts. I don't think this text is necessarily relevant, but I'd like to give a general introduction to the notion of freedom in the West so that we can have a broader perspective on what we can think about. I promise I won't dwell on this exhaustively.
That would be the subject of an entire course. But I say this because recent debates surrounding the Council of Freedom have become increasingly frequent in Brazil. We see there, for example, the case of Monarque, which is a rather idiotic case, of someone who defends that idea of an unrestricted freedom of expression, but in a more profound manner as it pertains to our own production, our life as a society, our own political existence within this society.
Yes, I would say that the Council of Freedom is central today for thinking about Brazil, especially throughout this process of condemning the former President of the Republic, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Among Bolsonaro supporters, the idea that freedom is in crisis, that it's a dictatorship, is often invoked. Well, in defining what freedom is, I don't intend to exhaust the possibilities of its understanding, nor to give an answer to this question, but to offer conceptual perspectives that can help us begin this discussion.
So, you see, I think that in a more impoverished way, freedom is thought of as the absolute act of doing whatever one wants, isn't it? I mean, freedom in a very impoverished way, impoverished even in the philosophical sense, because some authors have already worked on freedom as something unrestricted, of doing whatever one wants, of being inconsequential. That is, the consequences cannot in any way be an obstacle to my actions of freedom , in other words, it is a complete doing of whatever one wants.
This has already been explored in the history of philosophy, for example, in the philosophy of Thomas Robs, who approaches freedom from this idea of doing whatever one wants. Why? Because Thomas Robs is a mechanist, his thought is extremely indebted to physics, and he conceives of the freedom of subjects from the notion of the freedom of bodies.
And what does it mean to be free for a body? It means being able to move, to move wherever one wants. And from there, of course, arises an idea of restricted freedom.
But look, when certain groups within our society claim that freedom is doing whatever one wants, not even Thomas Robs is invoked. That is, there is no basis for a mechanical philosophy of physics to support this idea. It is simply presented as such by an imperative that we cannot even call ethical or moral, but an anti-ethical, anti-moral imperative, because it is not grounded in any metaphysical perspective on ethics and no societal perspective on right or wrong.
In other words, this type of thought cannot be constituted in the field of ethics or in the field of morality. It is an ahistorical, aphilosophical thought. That is, it has no commitment to philosophy, to history , or to social debate.
It's a thought that arises, I believe, from a regression to childhood, in a very Freudian way, to put it here, right? A childhood regression. I do what I want.
That's how children are, isn't it? As long as parents don't impose limits on what they can do, as long as they are socializing at school and in society, and the school and society don't impose limits, this child can do whatever they want. So, it's necessary to cultivate these limits in society.
This regression to childhood, to the recklessness of doing whatever one wants, I think is at the root of a very dangerous movement of adults who are becoming increasingly infantilized. So I would say, there is a perspective in philosophy on this almost reckless nature of doing whatever one wants, which is actually seen by physics as the freedom of bodies, as it is in Hobbes. And note that Hobbes himself doesn't uphold this idea to its ultimate limits, but it is thought of in this sense, at the same time as the need for Leviathan, for the being that is there, because man is a wolf to man.
And this metaphor of freedom in physics as doing whatever one wants only arises to exemplify the need for a leviathan in hobbies, right? I mean, the need for something that, well, if freedom is this, it requires something that imposes limits, that imposes limits on this experience of doing whatever one wants, right? So, look, uh, no serious philosopher addresses the issue of freedom in Brazil in the way it has been treated, which I find impoverished , not to say.
I wouldn't even call it mediocre. Mediocre would be a compliment, wouldn't it? It's a very impoverished issue, a banal, stupid one , right?
If we want to put it in those terms. So, look, that's the first characteristic. Then, in idealist philosophies, the notion of freedom arises largely in relation to reason.
Let's look at Descartes, for example, where freedom arises as knowledge that limits the will. So, you see, Descartes is there in the fourth meditation, where he considers the origin of errors and the principle of how I can find true things in metaphysical meditations . And Descartes states, right?
Look, uh , my will is always superior to my knowledge. My will exceeds me in size. I have more will than knowledge.
And training my knowledge would be limiting my will, that is, my reason is at the base of the control of the will. And it is precisely in this sense that I can be free in the control of my will from a rational perspective. It requires commitment, effort, knowledge, but there is still a very individualistic perspective.
Then we have Kant, who comes from a perspective very close to Descartes, with certain notions. And then we can think about some issues like the question of maturity, right? Of the responsible being in Kant, which is a mature being, ready for maturity, that being who, through rational means, manages to identify, from universal principles—let's remember the categorical imperative, right?
—the possibilities of their own action. And that is a truly free being. So, I am, first and foremost, free when I limit my will once again through universal imperatives.
Is it the same as Descartes? No, I'm not going to explain that now either, right? Imagine, we would have to look at all of Kant's and Descartes 'philosophies.
There are particularities, although, being idealists and rationalists, the two are quite close on this point, right? Let's now go to a critical Marxist perspective. From a critical Marxist perspective, this idealism is destroyed .
What we have are not universal presuppositions. The presupposition of ethics is not a universal presupposition found through meditations, found through self-reflection by way of rationality. Rationality is committed, first and foremost, to the material analysis of that society from a historical perspective, understanding the contradictions within its mode of production.
So, when I think of freedom in Marxism, it is a freedom that is only realized in a material way. It's not freedom in the rational sense of controlling my actions, of imposing limits on my will, but it's a freedom that is realized in the material world, such as the right to housing, the right to food, the right to vote. It's a freedom that materializes within that society amidst its conflicts, right?
So , in this case, rationality intervenes in the sense of analyzing and proposing interventions in reality. It's very concrete. This will show that the question of individual freedom is first and foremost a political question, right?
The way we organize ourselves politically suggests that some individuals are freer than others. Whereas in idealism, this is not the case. Freedom, from a political point of view, is not achieved through politics.
It is achieved first and foremost through rationality and through the reflection of ideas, right? So this is important because here I believe there's a context of a kind where we can think about this question of episodic freedom in the context of revolutions with the promise of freedom . So I think that when he says that freedom will have been episodic, my reading here is that he's approaching a more Marxist tradition, or, to use Milton Santos's term, a Marxist one.
Let's not limit ourselves to Marxism, but understanding this paragraph, perhaps some indication can be made. And he continues, therefore, an episode in the sense of an interlude, a connection between the parts, freedom, right? This feeling of freedom is established in the passage from one way of life to another, until this one also reveals itself as a mode of coercion.
So, there, this feeling of freedom is established in the passage from one way of life to another, until this one also reveals itself as a mode of coercion. So, there is a promise of freedom between one way of life and another, between the change from this situation to the one that proposes this freedom, but which in the end reveals itself as coercion. What is there here?
There is an assumption that, look, the notion of what we understand as freedom transforms and there is always a promise of greater freedom. This is fundamental to understanding, then, Bi Churhan, because there is a promise of greater freedom, but what actually happens are even more potent mechanisms of coercion. This is the tendency that Bium Churhan points to: the history of capitalist society, Western society in general, is a history of a general tendency, with its interludes, of course, but a general tendency where the mechanisms of domination become increasingly positive mechanisms.
What does this mean? That increasingly, domination presents itself as an identity. We see this by analyzing Bunch in his work.
So we see that in the beginning we had a society marked by the force of arms, of the sword, right? A society before the disciplinary society, a society marked by militarism. That is, I impose power in that society through arms, through violent repression.
Remembering here an essential factor for thinking about Bium Churhan, right? For Bian, violence is the most impoverished way of exercising power. Power reveals itself to be all the more fragile the more it resorts to violence.
In that sense, we're saying, this channel isn't about geography. Look, look at the possibilities for geography. We're analyzing a context where Trump is increasingly militarizing the world, increasingly resorting to violence to exert his global hegemony.
What does that mean? First of all, as Burran would say, the United States is in crisis. Of course, they are increasingly resorting to less positive mechanisms, more negative mechanisms, that is, mechanisms of violence to exert their domination.
So this shows, first and foremost, a crisis of American power rather than an expansion of its power. It means that something is going wrong there. It's indicative of a crisis in that sense, right?
So, violence is the lowest level. Then comes the disciplinary society, where the use of force, the use of the sword, military repression, direct police repression is no longer necessary, but you now have the issue of discipline. What is discipline?
Discipline of bodies. You now have external surveillance and a shaping of behaviors that is not necessarily through weapons , but can resort to this method, as it still can today, right? Right?
As this power is gradually being eroded, it regresses back to these previous mechanisms of domination. But in disciplinary society, as seen by Foucault, what is the idea? That there is control of discourse, right?
So there are diverse discourses, what Foucault also calls heteronomous spaces , right? That is, heteronomy, the idea that there is a space with infinite possibilities of discourse from these small, atomized groups within society. And these groups, then, exercise their discourse.
This discourse has a limit. Where is the limit? In the institutions that regulate discourse, such as the psychiatric institution, which, for example, is responsible for considering what is rational and what is madness.
So, for a long time, homosexuality was seen as madness, because what is it? It is a pattern of behavioral regulation that imposes that certain behaviors are rational and others are not, right? There is a political order that sees certain issues as right or wrong.
So, there is discursive control, there is a production, regulation of discourses. We need to read Michel Foucault's discourse order, without even mentioning the watchman's punishment, in the history of sexuality. All of this will show a bit of this Foucauldian vision of what biopolitics would be.
Something that Foucault and Bing Chuan also take up as orthopedic intervention, right? A direct intervention in the regulation of bodies, of the movements of bodies. So, it's a society where discourse is now regulated, and this discourse is also on the agenda of regulating and promoting certain ideologies, right?
Certain ideologies that emerge as imperatives and regulate discourse. Now , of course, not a society of total control. This surveillance arises precisely from the panopticon of the watchtower, because there is still surveillance.
This is made possible by technical development. So, I believe that what would be the most effective way for us to visualize this society would be that little sign that is positioned right underneath the cameras , don't you think? Smile, you're being filmed.
In other words, it is a constant state of surveillance where you feel perpetually watched, which causes you to mold your behavior based on that scrutiny; you often end up acting accordingly, and in doing so, you even start to normalize these behaviors a bit more, right? So, there's more effective surveillance, and this makes it impossible, right? Or doesn't make it impossible, but in this sense, it requires less direct, violent intervention.
You have other mechanisms of coercion through surveillance, discourse, and ideology that prevent individuals from stepping out of line. And so, in this sense, the violent use of weapons is increasingly unnecessary. Finally, we arrive at the society he's talking about here, right?
This feeling of freedom is established in the transition from one way of life to another, until this one also reveals itself as a model of coercion. So, when we come from this first society, this militarized society designed to discipline, what do we have there? A promise of greater freedom.
You will be freer. Look, there's no violence against you. And what is the purpose of surveillance cameras?
To protect you. Of course, surveillance cameras aren't meant to control your behavior, they're meant to protect you from the behavior of a third party who might do something against you, right? So, it arises in that sense.
There's a promise of freedom, a false promise. He's saying here, it's transforming into coercion, and the performance society we have now further reinforces this promise. Psychopolitics is that.
In other words, what is the performance society now? This society where surveillance cameras are no longer necessary, they are still necessary, right? But what is paramount , the surveillance camera is no longer necessarily paramount.
What is paramount now is that subjects internalize this set of domination into their own psychic behavior, into their own psychic structure. That is, it is necessary that within their psyche they are responsible for self-mastery. They master themselves, they effect this domination through the digestion, the internalization of these concepts of power and domination.
This is how he makes himself both sovereign and slave at once, in order to resume the master-slave dialectic that Hegel originally formulated. This has many implications, such as how Churran will discuss the class struggle; it dissolves because now I don't identify the figure of someone who dominates me as an alterity; I dominate myself. I identify within myself the one who dominates me.
So, at the same time, I become the figure of both master and slave. This is a promise of freedom because it will emerge, according to certain discursive forms, such as that of the individual entrepreneur. You are freer.
Be your own boss. Why do you want someone to tell you what you have to do? Be your own boss.
Right? These are ideological mechanisms that reinforce this internalization. I even used another term, right?
I said digestion of power. I didn't use it by chance, because this term is mobilized by Bium Chuan in the book*What is Power ? From a Reguelian Perspective*, right?
So, I see, in this passage, it's not even a paragraph, it's a sentence, the rich content we have, and something we're going to continue exploring, right? And it continues like this: a new form of submission succeeds liberation. With each new liberation, a new form of submission.
The two perspectives here: there's both the perspective of revolutions, where each revolution arises with the promise of freedom and tends, in the end, to resume a conservative character. It's the bourgeoisie that makes its bourgeois revolutions and promises the liberation of the proletariat but doesn't actually achieve that liberation; and it's, at the same time, the transformation, the positivation of these regimes of domination, that is, the positivation with more and more "I am,""I exist" in relation to power through the notion of identity. That's what positivity is.
I identify more and more with power, and I identify so much now that I've turned this into renting a room in my psyche for that power, right? In other words, increasingly my own mind performs this function without it being necessary for someone else to do it in any way. Although, you know how it is, right?
Whenever this power goes into crisis, it regresses to more negative mechanisms. It returns to a disciplinary society, then it returns to a militarized society, right? Very well.
That's the subject's destiny, which literally means being subjugated. This notion of the subject is very important, folks. There are several contemporary psychoanalytic currents that consider this question of the subject, which seeks to replace the notion of subject, of individual, with the notion of subject, because the subject's own etymology means being subjugated to some psychic instance that is there exercising its function.
Now, in Binungchuran, it's important to note that this psychic instance does not exist alone. There is both a primordial notion of psychic subjection given by the psychic mechanisms themselves, the unconscious and everything else, but also note that this unconscious—which is, above all, language—exists in relation to society, and this society acts in a very expressive way in the production of this unconscious. Look, Freud didn't fail to address this in*Civilization and Its Discontents*.
He writes at length about the question of guilt, and he shows how the superego, which is an instance that is simultaneously unconscious and conscious, is produced by society. That is, Freud says: "There is an unconscious or partially conscious instance, the superego, which is at the base of the production of my psychic behavior. " In other words, it is important to think of the subject as this subjected being and to reinforce this notion in a society that, driven by psychopolitics, works by internalizing mechanisms so that I myself exercise the role of this domination.
I no longer need the master with the whip, I no longer need the surveillance cameras. I begin to feel guilty when, for example, I am not producing. When I am not producing, I feel guilty.
When I'm not doing something that undermines productivity, I feel guilty because I've become my own boss. I'm now responsible for controlling myself. This has various psychological consequences: burnout, depression, anxiety, which are characteristic of our current times.
I play the role of being my own vigilante , and I punish myself when I don't do what I should, through guilt, anxiety, depression, and so on. This is the notion that Churran is presenting, and which I'm already addressing in many points in this first paragraph, right? So I'm going back and forth.
Well, folks, this first paragraph was dense. Just look, a single paragraph. How much wonderful stuff we can find in a single paragraph.
And some people think that's not enough, right? Some people think we need to go back to the depth, take the paragraph and dissect it as much as possible in what we tend to call structural reading. Folks, I'll stop here.
Let's divide this first chapter into two, shall we? First subchapter, the exploration of freedom. We will then continue from the second paragraph .
In this first part, we had a general discussion about Biuran's work, about how some initial concepts appear in this chapter, and we'll pick it up from here, right? So, in that sense, if you have any questions or doubts, please leave your suggestions for debate and critical discussions in the comments. Feel free to do so, and until next time , everyone.
