Burning Out
“Disciplinary society is a society of negativity. It is defined by the negativity of prohibition. The negative modal verb that governs it is May Not. By the same token, the negativity of compulsion adheres to Should. Achievement society, more and more, is in the process of discarding negativity. Increasing deregulation is abolishing it. Unlimited Can is the positive modal verb of achievement society. Its plural form—the affirmation, “Yes, we can”—epitomizes achievement society’s positive orientation. Prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation. Disciplinary society is still governed by no. Its negativity produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers.
[…] Beyond a certain point of productivity, disciplinary technology—or, alternately, the negative scheme of prohibition—hits a limit. To heighten productivity, the paradigm of disciplination is replaced by the paradigm of achievement, or, in other words, by the positive scheme of Can; after a certain level of productivity obtains, the negativity of prohibition impedes further expansion. The positivity of Can is much more efficient than the negativity of Should. Therefore, the social unconscious switches from Should to Can. The achievement-subject is faster and more productive than the obedience-subject. However, the Can does not revoke the Should. The obedience-subject remains disciplined. It has now completed the disciplinary stage.
[…] Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation. This is more efficient than allo-exploitation, for the feeling of freedom attends it. The exploiter is simultaneously the exploited. Perpetrator and victim can no longer be distinguished. Such self-referentiality produces a paradoxical freedom that abruptly switches over into violence because of the compulsive structures dwelling within it. The psychic indispositions of achievement society are pathological manifestations of such a paradoxical freedom.
— Byung-Chul Han from Burnout Society
I need to admit something — to myself most of all, but to my readers as well — and it is this: I am burning out.
It is important that I admit this to myself and to my readers because, if I am to live by what I write, it is imperative that I do not divorce what I produce from the process of its production.
Over the past five years, I’ve written, edited, designed, and self-published six books, and I’ve written many other precis, essays, and occasional pieces besides; I’ve participated in and conducted seminars that have involved reading tens of thousands of dense pages of philosophy, psychology, and history; I’ve presented original research and creative projects at panels and workshops at several academic conferences; and I’ve maintained intellectual dialogues and correspondences with a number of artists, philosophers, and scientists.
Undoubtedly, this work has given my life meaning, so to speak, but it has neither clothed, nor fed, nor sheltered me and my loved ones. To the contrary, this work has, more often than not, drawn upon the scarce economic resources available to me and, in so doing, it has often made it more difficult for me to support myself and my loved ones.
Given that I make experimental and countercultural work on the margins of the academy and the culture industry, rather than being paid, I find that I usually have to pay for access and opportunities to share my work with audiences and with other creatives doing work that complements my own. What’s more, I am a first generation African in Amerikkka who is very vulnerable to the depredations of the nation’s racist neoliberal economic regime: I have neither family wealth nor legacy connections to networks of cultural and social capital that might enable me to thrive on the countercultural margins. This is to say, in other words, that I must often pay a premium, in both unpaid labor time and money, for access and opportunities that I could already hardly afford.
To make a living for myself and to pay to do the work that gives my life meaning, I have had to hold down several full-time administrative jobs, stealing back what time I can from my employers in order to make time for more meaningful work.
Stealing the time needed to do what I have done over the past five years has been no easy feat for me. It has required time management balancing acts that required that I develop and deploy subtle diplomatic skills in order to delay the biddings, commands, directives, and orders of my “superiors” without rubbing them the wrong way and being (mis)taken for a less than capable and dutiful employee. Stealing time has, thus, been a source of immense stress, compounding the stresses of actually doing the meaningful work that I endeavor to do in my stolen time.
As you know, dear reader, the work that gives my life meaning is the work of uncovering and considering the deeply disturbing realities of prevailing imperialisms in order to conceive of ways to make artful reparations to those who suffer them. This work demands that I deeply consider the murder, rape, starvation, and torture of hundreds of millions of dehumanized humans, and the outrageous cruelties inflicted upon countless non-human others over the past five centuries of advancing imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal hegemony. These horrors have shaped and continue to shape my own personal history and are part and parcel of an ongoing planetary ecocide, the Great Thinning and the Sixth Extinction.
The fact of the matter is, however, that I am one of the lucky ones. I have been furnished with motives, means, and opportunities to steal time back for myself and to deeply consider my own life circumstances in relation to the ongoing planetary ecocide. Perhaps I can take pride in having seized upon the motives, means, and opportunities that have been made available to me, but I am incredibly lucky that these have been made available to me at all. Such motives, means, and opportunities are not commonly made available, and many today find that the most tolerable life for them is a life in which they dissociate as best they can from the profound genocidal, ethnocidal and ecocidal projects that are ruining life on our planet.
This is all “by design” so to speak. I have been given more motives, means, and opportunities than some because I have been deemed a more tolerable risk for the status quo than some; and I have been given less than others because I have been deemed a less tolerable risk than others. I have proved myself a more tolerable risk to the status quo by ensuring that my work, though not properly academic, is academically inflected, and by making countercultural appeals that are far more intellectual than emotional. I have muted my anger and disgust towards the status quo in order to maintain that I am a “reasonable” critic of the status quo — a critic who does not let his own personal circumstances and his emotional responses get in the way of his rational analyses. The fact of the matter is, however, that I am often overwhelmed by the hysterical anger and obsessive neurotic disgust that I feel towards the status quo, while believing that anger and disgust are a healthy responses to an unhealthy reality. Still, however, I continue to put a great deal of effort into muting my anger and disgust so that I am not dismissed as a maladjusted misfit by gatekeepers who might bar my access to the margins of the academy and culture industry. This is neither a thing to be proud of nor is it a healthy thing to do.
To repress healthy anger and disgust that demands to be expressed and, in so doing, benefit from comforting gatekeepers, is a backhanded form of privilege, yes, but it is a form of privilege nonetheless. The anger and disgust that the status quo evokes in most of us is, justifiably, far too much for many of us to hold back — a fact which has effectively enabled privileged gatekeepers to deny access and opportunities to many “uncivil” Black, colored, and indigenous persons, citing their “behavioral issues.’’ Those among us who are able to hold back and do not ruffle the feathers of gatekeepers need to recognize that this ability is a remarkable privilege.
Before I move on, I need you to feel some of the anger and disgust that I am talking about here. You really must remember this: hundreds of millions of mostly Black, colored, and indigenous people have been murdered, raped, starved, and tortured over the past five centuries in order to construct a world in which wildlife populations, which have already fallen by two-thirds over the last fifty years, continue to fall to new lows; a world in which nearly half of all Earth’s languages are endangered and threatened with extinction within a century; a world in which two billion mostly Black, colored, and indigenous people are going hungry and four billion are enduring the grinding poverty of underdevelopment. All that this deathly world of suffering condescends to offer individuals enduring the grinding poverty of underdevelopment (which pulverizes the body) is the slim chance that they or, what is more likely, their descendants might someday graduate to a level of development that will subject them to the draining “modernized poverty” of development (which does not pulverize the body but, instead, saps the spirit and leaves the body feeling empty and meaningless). As Ivan Illich writes, modernized poverty “combines the lack of power over circumstances with a loss of personal potency”; it is the experience of “frustrating affluence” that occurs in persons “mutilated” by their absolute dependence on industrial productivity. Modernized poverty means enduring life in “an urban landscape that is unfit for people unless they devour each day their own weight in metals, plastics, and fuels, […] in which the constant need for protection against the unwanted results of more commodities and more commands has generated new depths of discrimination, impotence, and frustration.”
Those of us in the global majority find ourselves in a world that tells us that modernized poverty is the best likely outcome for most of us, but that this outcome is only achievable at the cost of exterminating large swathes of living cultures and living nature. At the same time, most of us in the global majority find that we must repress our anger and disgust at the deathly world of suffering we inhabit, if we are to get by and make a decent living for ourselves. What’s more, though we may repress our anger and disgust with all our might, most of us find that our anger and disgust inevitably return to the surface, often at the most inopportune moments, often in ways that sabotage our efforts to get by. The most “privileged” amongst us in the global majority are those of us who find ways to decorously express our anger and disgust without overtly threatening or undermining the ruling classes that prevail over, and derive the most pleasures and profits from, this deathly world of suffering. Ay, too many of us “earn” our “privileges” by making it our second nature to redirect our anger and disgust away from the deathly world that oppresses us, and back towards ourselves and/or towards others who are either equally oppressed or even more oppressed.
Having overworked myself these past five years in order to accomplish work that I believe to be meaningful; having had to pay to overwork myself instead of being paid; having struggled to maintain the backhanded privilege of being able to steal time from my employers and squander my paychecks in order to overwork myself; having had to confront the profound horrors of global apartheid and planetary ecocide while overworking myself; having repressed and internalized the profound feelings of anger and disgust provoked by the profound horrors that I confront while overworking myself… All of this is more than enough to explain why I am burning out, and I’ve still yet to mention the most fundamental and stressful of life’s present difficulties: affording ethically and sustainably produced food, clothing, and shelter and endeavoring to care for my loved ones in the midst of economic and ecological crises and a global pandemic.
Putting all of this together makes me wonder… In and through overworking myself these past five years, is it possible that I have been redirecting a portion of my feelings of anger and disgust away from the deathly world that oppresses me and back towards myself?
Indeed, taking a step back and examining my “achievements” over the past five years, I recognize quite clearly that, motivated by feelings of anger and disgust, I have overworked myself in the name of creativity and freedom and, in so doing, yoked my own creativity to the burdensome demands of the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal cult of productivity. Ay, I recognize and scoff at this ironic situation but, at the same time, I also recognize that I have been stuck between a rock and a hard place.
'do no evil' and 'do good' by Ikkyū
Inspired by Taoist sages, Zen masters, and contemporary writers like Jenny Odell, I firmly believe that we will never free ourselves from the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal cult of productivity unless we can effectively learn “how to do nothing.” That being said, I also know that few of us today can afford to effectively learn “how to do nothing.” Unlike the Taoist sages, Zen masters, and writers like Jenny Odell, I feel that it is necessary to stress the fact that most of us will never effectively learn “how to do nothing” without transforming our world in critical ways. The white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal cult of productivity prevails over most of our world today, and it threatens most of us, especially those of us who are Black, colored, and indigenous, with murder when we are unproductive — disguising so many death threats as matters of routine disciplinary action, as normal(ized) accidents, and as the collateral damage of the pursuit of progressive optimization. Only those of us who have, by ourselves or by proxy, produced more than enough to satisfy the prevailing cult of productivity can afford to learn “how to do nothing” without facing so many disguised death threats.
For the past five years, I have been trying to produce an excess of meaningful creative work in order to satisfy the cult of productivity, hoping that doing so might enable me to afford to learn “how to do nothing” and to help others to do the same. Alas, I have failed in this endeavor, and I am now burning out as a result. I cannot fault myself for failing: without an elite academic degree, without hereditary wealth, and without legacy connections to networks of cultural and social capital, there was only a scant possibility that I would “achieve” my aim. I might fault myself for having devoted an undue amount of my time and energy to reaching for this scant possibility of “achievement” and burning out as a result.
But, then again, what else was I to do? I found myself in a situation not unlike the one described in a curious Zen koan titled, “Incense Regal Stuck High”:
Master Incense-Regal Mountain said: “It’s like being stuck high in a tree — teeth clamped down on a branch tip, nothing in reach and no footholds anywhere. Someone on the ground calls up, “That ch’i-mind Bodhidharma brought from the West: what is it?”
If you don’t answer you deny the question. If you do answer you cut your life short and lose your destiny. Here, now, this moment just like that: how will you answer to save your life?
