Toward a Critique of Critique: Paradoxes of Byung‐Chul Han and the Dialectic of Despair and Possibility

Byung-Chul Han has emerged as one of the most notable figures in contemporary philosophy, with a prolific output of essayistic books diagnosing the socio-political and cultural ramifications today. Since the publication of Die Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (The Burnout Society), Han's ([2010] 2015a) reflections, particularly on digital capitalism, neoliberal subjectivity, and the loss of “otherness,” have gained a wide readership. Over the past decade, he has published roughly 20 books—typically slim volumes, each centered on a single evocative concept—constituting a remarkably consistent body of work. Though often associated with the Frankfurt School due to his critique of the cultural, psychological, and epistemic effects of late capitalism, this affiliation captures only one dimension of his thought. Han's intellectual roots lie equally in Hegel, Heidegger, and Zen traditions—sources shaping his “mood-thinking” through notions like tiredness, boredom, and passivity (Knepper et al. 2024). Rather than fitting squarely within dialectical or materialist models, Han's framework is hybrid and syncretic. This explains why Knepper et al. (2024: 10) align him more with North American democratic theorists—such as Dallmayr, Connolly, Brown, Butler, and West—than with Frankfurtian critical theory (see Knepper et al. 2024: 59–63). In this regard, his ambiguous status as “unique within critical theory” might be captured through “five ways of reading Han” (Wyllie and Knepper 2024: 74–75): as cosmopolitan, contemplative, social critic, media theorist, and philosopher of beauty. Such breadth signals Han's orientation toward a cross-cultural, non-doctrinaire intellectual terrain. From The Transparency Society ([2012] 2015b) and Psychopolitics ([2014] 2017a) to The Disappearance of Rituals ([2019] 2020), The Crisis of Narration ([2023] 2024a), and The Spirit of Hope ([2024] 2024b), Han's works diagnose a distinctive modality of neoliberal power: one that no longer represses through external prohibitions but governs through imperatives of self-optimization, transparency, and affective productivity. In doing so, he has positioned himself as a diagnostician of our times, issuing stark warnings about the erosion of fundamental human capacities like contemplation, relational depth, and political resistance. In his terms, Han explicitly distinguishes this mode of domination from internalization, which he defines narrowly as the absorption of negative constraints and interdictions. “Positive compulsion”—the drive to achieve, to enhance, to perform—is for Han categorically distinct from internalization (Han 2017a: 14–15). While his distinction between prohibition and compulsion is central to his framework, it warrants reconsideration. A shift from the source to the function of compulsion reveals that neoliberal subjectivation still involves internalization, albeit reconfigured. Rather than negation, the subject internalizes affirmative injunctions to thrive. This “positive internalization” operates as affective self-binding, where subjection is lived as autonomy and domination is sustained through the desire for self-optimizing (Rose 2001). In this paper, I seek to examine the paradoxes that define Han's corpus and invite critical interrogation, not merely as an isolated intellectual phenomenon but as symptomatic of broader structural tensions within contemporary critical theory itself. His popularity among general audiences—via digestible, accessible books and viral social media fragments—raises further questions about the conditions under which critique circulates and gains traction today. I analyze his mode of critique, which frequently takes on a “melancholic” tone, offering a lament for lost values and possibilities without articulating a clear vision for their restoration, although he explicitly revisits this impasse, proposing a redefinition of hope that exceeds melancholic resignation (see Han 2024b). At the same time, I explore his participation in the acceleration of theoretical production, raising questions about the commodification of critical thought in today's knowledge economy. As the recurrence of themes is not unique to Han—thinkers like Eagleton, Agamben or Žižek also return to central motifs—Han's compact style and aphoristic mode render this repetition particularly visible. Some may interpret this as a didactic effort to reach broader audiences or to deepen a singular diagnosis across multiple registers (see West 2017). Like Eagleton, Han's brevity and recurrence may partly reflect an effort to speak beyond academia gesture not of simplification but of accessibility. Nonetheless, I argue that when paired with the market-friendly rhythm of near-annual publication, this pattern risks enacting the very saturation Han seeks to critique, where theoretical critique itself becomes subject to cycles of affective consumption enabling melancholic attunement. Finally, I engage with what might be termed Han's “messiah complex,” a critique of utopian or redemptive hope that paradoxically may frame liberation in terms of an impossible event. Yet, in The Spirit of Hope ([2024] 2024b), this critique is nuanced through a more affirmative framing of hope, not as redemptive certainty, but as an open, ethical, and future-oriented disposition. This is where Han offers his most sustained reflections on hope, messianism, and redemptive possibility—topics that complicate the dominant reading of his work as purely melancholic or fatalistic. Whilst remaining skeptical of utopianism and avoiding prescriptive blueprints, he nevertheless redefines hope as a contemplative, relational, and action-oriented force—one that opens space for solidarity, grace, and a renewed sense of futurity. This shift in Han's language of hope serves as a subtle counterpoint to interpretations that portray him as sealed within melancholic withdrawal (see Cohen 2025). Although Han might not be viewed as irredeemably melancholic, the work does not abandon melancholia so much as it transfigures it. 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