Byung Chul Han: The Transparency Society

Nor does the society of positivity tolerate negative feelings.
Consequently, one loses the ability to handle suffering and pain, to
give them form. For Nietzsche, the human soul owes its depth,
grandeur, and strength precisely to the time it spends with the
negative. Human spirit is born from pain, too: “That tension of the
soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, . . . its inventiveness
and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting, and
exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity,
secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness—was it not granted
through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”


The general consensus of the society of positivity is “Like.” It
is telling that Facebook has consistently refused to introduce a
“Dislike” button. The society of positivity avoids negativity in all
forms because negativity makes communication stall. The value of
communication is measured solely in terms of the quantity of
information and the speed of exchange. The mass of communication
also augments its economic value. Negative judgments impair
communication. Further communication occurs more quickly
following “Like” than “Dislike.” Most importantly, the negativity
that rejection entails cannot be exploited economically.


Transparency is a neoliberal dispositive. It forces everything
inward in order to transform it into information. Under today’s
immaterial relations of production, more information and communication
mean more productivity and acceleration. In contrast,
secrecy, foreignness, and otherness represent obstacles for communication
without borders. They are to be dismantled in the
name of transparency.