This article discusses the effects of the neoliberal era on the individual and society through Byung-Chul Han’s works Capitalism and the Death Drive, Expulsion of the Other, and Crisis of Narration. In Han’s thought, the neoliberal order appears as a form of power that is internalised by the individual; exploitation ceases to be an external force and persists through the subject’s illusion of freedom. This study analyses how the ideologies of productivity, performance, and positivity generated by neoliberalism isolate the individual, eliminate otherness, and replace the importance of meaning and narration with an obsession with efficiency. Ultimately, Han’s theory offers a critical perspective on the emotional, ethical, and narrative crises of contemporary capitalist society.
The contemporary neoliberal order has fundamentally reconfigured the modalities through which subjectivity is produced, governed, and enacted. Rather than operating through overt disciplinary constraints, neoliberal power increasingly mobilises freedom, choice, and self-responsibility as techniques of governance, thereby transforming individuals into agents of their own optimisation and control. Within this context, Byung-Chul Han’s theoretical corpus—especially his interrogations of otherness, affectivity, and the crisis of experience—offers a critical framework for examining the psychosocial and epistemic consequences of these shifts. His analyses illuminate how the algorithmic rationalities of digital capitalism, the erosion of narrative coherence, and the economisation of life contribute to new forms of alienation that exceed classical paradigms grounded in labour, production, or class relations. This text draws on Han’s insights to explore how neoliberalism problematizes the very conditions of ethical relationality and experiential depth, situating these transformations within broader historical, socio-political, and technological developments. In doing so, it aims to delineate the contours of a subjectivity increasingly shaped by volatility, hypervisibility, and the systematic expulsion of the Other.
The Emergence of the Neoliberal Subject: The Internalisation of Power
Neoliberal organisms, adapting to contemporary conditions, are evolved versions of their ancestors. Systems that place freedom and individuality at their centre emerge as structures that artfully decorate and market developments that sound appealing. Neoliberalism, given today’s technological advancements and the general acceleration of change, has gradually abandoned the rigid, repressive approach of the past. Such a stance benefits neither the system nor the subjects within its sphere of control and influence. Instead, it operates by making individuals dependent in ways that are selective but highly effective. It places individuality and individualism at its core. It responds to any institution, person, or event capable of generating a shared public sphere with silencing or suppressive reactions (Han, 2023, p. 26). Postmodern capitalist and neoliberal states continue their restrictive tendencies by masking them. For instance, the rise in the significance of labour unions in the first half of the 1950s, following the intense industrialisation that preceded the Second World War, was not welcomed by such states. One of the main reasons was that they had begun to view their citizens solely as productive units. When political interests come into play, mobilising individuals through ideology, religion, sect, or ethnicity becomes increasingly easy.
For Marx, breaking the chains of labour exploitation could only occur through a revolution that rose from below and expanded upward. Marx were alive today, he would most likely be dismissed as a marginal conspiracy theorist, yet his fundamental critique still retains its relevance: society must not remain open to externally imposed forms of domination. This was a direct critique of exploitative mentalities—one premised on the foundations of social life. In today’s capitalist systems, the worker who supplies labour continues to be exploited, and as Marx argued, externally imposed exploitation has intrinsic limits. Given the mutational form capitalism has taken under neoliberal policies, Byung-Chul Han emphasises self-exploitation. The individual is now willing to expend their own labour to the point of exhaustion:
“If I am suffering, if I am going bankrupt, I alone am to blame. Self-exploitation is exploitation without domination because it is entirely voluntary. It is so effective precisely because it bears the stamp of freedom. A collective, a ‘we,’ that might revolt against the system never emerges.”
The political and social restrictions imposed in Turkey over the past decade, along with policies that disregard the public and the limited resistance they elicit on the streets, also align with the mechanism Han describes. When freedoms are partially granted, the exploitation exercised through individuals can be obscured, and public reaction no longer resonates as strongly. In the postmodern era, the status quo–oriented state conducts exploitation through new forms and channels. These are now more easily concealed behind the façade of globalisation and social media, which facilitate mass mobility. In addition, new technological developments—such as Big Data and artificial intelligence algorithms—function to prevent individuals from engaging with diverse ideas and to distance them from the collective reflex of being a society.
The Erasure of Otherness: The Loss of Authenticity in the Information Age
Today, social media serves as a medium used by people in many different ways. Particularly on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, content creation often seems to aim more at displaying one’s experiences to others rather than actually living them. This phenomenon gave rise to the now-popular concept of “Instagram VS Reality.” As the experience itself loses significance, the individual begins to engage with situations primarily to showcase them to others—a practice that deviates from the activity’s original purpose. Visiting a place to see it, to experience it, or even to linger and truly live it—values that nourish the inner world and psyche of the individual—find little place in the algorithmic world. But where does information fit in all this?
Experience, Display, and the Algorithmic Reduction of Reality
Access to information is today extremely easy—a cliché, but perhaps that is why it is often overlooked. Information no longer conjures the image of encyclopedic knowledge. If one wants comprehensive summaries, Wikipedia appears; if summaries suffice, ChatGPT serves. This is not an attempt to romanticise the past with “we used to read encyclopedias.” Nor do I claim that easy access diminishes the importance of knowledge. The crucial point is that the nature of knowledge itself has changed, and the fact that it can be obtained with a single click threatens the individual’s capacity for original understanding and uniqueness. These forms of information are no longer archived in books, journals, or encyclopedic volumes. Once digitised, the individual interacts with a digital library, which, because Big Data lacks human functions, cannot grasp understanding or experience. For example, when seeing a photo of someone attending a yoga camp in Ubud on Instagram, most of us assume it must be a cool experience; the algorithm, however, cares only about whether we interact with the content. Thus, both the platform and the experience itself are absorbed into Big Data as mere information shared to be displayed externally.
“The connection and communication of everyone with each other through digital tools does not facilitate face-to-face encounters with others. On the contrary, it serves to bypass strangers and others, helping to find people who think the same or similarly, and narrowing the horizon of our experiences even further.”
Scrolling through your personalised feed, you encounter a stream of content produced by people doing similar—or sometimes identical—things, posting, or speaking in parallel ways. If you share a similar perspective, this familiarity may generate a sense of belonging or warmth in your mind. Yet, even with easy or immediate access to information, one still requires experience and comprehension to truly know. Without this, the individual merely possesses facts.
Correlational Knowledge and the Limits of Understanding
Correlational information is distant from both the essence of knowledge and the act of knowing. Big Data is not concerned with knowledge itself, but primarily with how and where individuals search for it, and how they can display it. It transforms these interactions into correlations based on patterns of likes and follows. Despite its name, it contains very little actual knowledge.
“Correlation is the most primitive form of information, lacking even the ability to understand causality, the relationship between cause and effect. It simply states this is how it is. The question of why is unnecessary. Therefore, nothing can be comprehended. To know, however, is to grasp.”
The act of comprehension is perhaps the most crucial step in truly knowing something. Without it, neither the individual nor Big Data achieves any meaningful intellectual engagement. One of the major issues in contemporary neoliberal societies is that many people have opinions on most topics without engaging in the act of knowing. This explains why being able to admit “I don’t know” has almost become a virtue.
In a society oriented toward display rather than reflective thought, neither individual differentiation nor social collectivism can emerge. Without achieving authenticity, groups that reject otherness grow larger, and collective consciousness cannot develop. Today, when everyone seems to pursue differentiation in the same way, it is not unreasonable to say that we are increasingly distant from knowing, experiencing, and comprehending.
Neoliberal Authenticity, Manufactured Difference, and Conformity
The social structure in neoliberalism, which suppresses reflective thought and excludes differentiation, also leads individuals toward extremism. The recent resurgence of radical right-wing and nationalist views exemplifies excessive reactions to this structure and everything it entails. As neoliberal systems show little interest in engaging with the content of knowledge, they similarly do not concern themselves with exploiting the individual directly; instead, they exploit one’s freedom in subtler ways. They achieve this by imposing illusions of authenticity and self-realisation:
“The pressure of authenticity forces the Self to create itself. Authenticity is ultimately the neoliberal form of self-production. It turns everyone into their own producer. As the entrepreneur of the self, the Self produces, performs, and presents itself as a commodity. Authenticity is a selling point.”
Ironically, most people believe they are pursuing differentiation through this process. Yet, in striving to differentiate, many converge toward conformity. This implies that individuals who start with claims of uniqueness may end up as conformist archetypes. “We have all fallen prey to the conformity of being different from one another.” When the individual surrounds themselves only with like-minded people, radical reactions to differing ideas and actions emerge. The result is disconnected individuals following whatever mainstream currents are presented. Capitalism is the very system that nurtures and renders visible these phenomena of excessive individualism and conformity in differentiation.
Excluding the Different While Trying to Be the Same
Han (2023, p. 88) draws attention to the etymology of the concept of Europe. He notes that the word Europe derives from the combination of “eurys” and “ops.” While eurys signifies “broad” or “distant,” ops means “sight” or “view.” At the same time, in Greek mythology—which is often cited as the origin of Europe and many elements of the European way of life—Europa was a Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull and taken to Crete. Interestingly, this mythological and etymological origin suggests that, according to its own logic, Europe comes from afar, even from the East.
Historically, small tribes such as the Germanic, Celtic, Gallic, and Etruscan peoples grew and began to exhibit the characteristics of nations through social identity, gradually forming what we now recognise as Europe. This development, in a sense, contradicts the mythological and etymological observation above. As these communities expanded and transformed into societies and, eventually, broader cultural entities, they did not refrain from maintaining core structures, such as the self and identity, at their centre. Viewed historically, these societies can be described as relatively closed.
Even in Ancient Rome, the Magnum Ideale dictated that everyone within Roman territory was considered a citizen; however, in daily life, except for slaves (though even some slaves gained a kind of status due to qualities like industriousness or practical intelligence), each individual identified themselves according to their place of origin or race. The relative lack of linguistic diversity compared to today worked in Rome’s favour: speaking Latin facilitated integration. Today, looking at the European Union, one can see that while such an ideal exists on paper, in practice, an Italian does not declare, “I am European.”
The common thread between these two supranational systems—whether two thousand years ago or three centuries ago—is the desire to eliminate what is distinct by consuming and subsuming. This process is a phenomenon of globalisation that continues to manifest today. Han (2023, p. 89) notes that radical and right-wing populist parties in Europe have emerged in reaction to this drive for homogenization. The attempt to change the different and force it into a single mould feeds a self-centred identity politics. In Europe’s historical genetics, this problem was often addressed through wars and, with Kant’s Perpetual Peace theory, attempted to be solved philosophically—but ultimately, it became a chronic issue. The European Union seeks not only to assimilate what is different, distant, or foreign but also to convert this assimilation into a form of grace, thus remaining trapped in a rigid social statism reminiscent of Ancient Rome. “In this sense, contemporary Europe is not a structure of reconciliation, as it presents itself as a post-political, bureaucratic power that either stands against or disregards the particular.” This phenomenon is not unique to Europe. In any society shaped by capitalism and colonialist mentality, systems guided by elites operate under a similar logic. Individuals thus become part of mechanisms shaped by historical and structural factors, reproducing a social order that rejects difference and enforces standardisation.
The Dissolution of Normativity and the European Experience
Economic Hegemony and the EU’s Ethical Deficit
During my university years, the European Union (EU) was generally presented as a supranational structure. Some argued that this reflected the diminishing importance of nation-states, while others emphasised the goal of facilitating economic unity, mobility, and trade among member states. Han (2023, p. 74) observes—and I agree—that this institution has become almost entirely economically driven, with value judgments gradually disappearing.
According to Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace theory, war is a natural condition, but humans can achieve lasting peace through reason. Kant emphasised ethical values as the core of this theory. He argued that secret treaties, standing armies, wars for honour, and interference in other states’ internal affairs must be completely abandoned. Instead, a system based on ethics, which safeguards human rights and freedoms, would allow peace to endure naturally. Furthermore, a supranational body serving as a monitoring mechanism—similar to today’s United Nations—would provide additional insurance.
When examining the EU today, it becomes clear that it falls far short of many of Kant’s principles. Even though states operating within or benefiting from a capitalist framework may claim to govern according to liberal values, in essence, the system reduces humans to commodities and individuals to production and consumption units.
Freedom of movement, trade agreements, and regulations among member states have established certain standards. To some extent, these have been successful. However, under the label of EU citizenship, an illusion is created that appears internally integrative while remaining divisive in global politics. Countries with colonial histories, such as Germany, France, the UK, and Italy—sustained today by a Franco-German economic engine—have, in Han’s terms, transformed the EU into a structure dominated by the hegemony of capital. “…if [the power of] money declines, [only then] it [the EU] can become a constitutional community governed by reason alone.” For example, Germany’s identity shifts and ideological erosion from the 1930s up to the outbreak of World War II enabled the country to present itself as a self-styled saviour; similar to the United States’ role in the Middle East under the guise of democracy, Germany’s actions also contributed to major destruction. Today, the EU plays a comparable role, functioning within the gears of capitalism much like a contemporary reflection of the mindset from which Weber’s Protestant work ethic arose.
Refugee Crisis, Colonial Legacies, and Moral Shortcomings
The consequences of Western intervention and exploitation in the Middle East manifest in Europe in different ways. The rigidity of bureaucratic systems, stagnation in education, and the collapse of social structures are reflected in the refugee crisis, rising inflation, housing shortages, and a lack of skilled labour. Yet, in capitalist states, even solutions to these crises are mediated through consumption. These states no longer act in the long-term interest of their populations, addressing problems only in the short term. Consequently, a vicious cycle emerges. Immigrants—whether low-wage labourers or skilled migrants—are often not valued more than citizens within a neoliberal framework. Thus, the European experience finds itself in an inherently divisive position. If these states were to abandon colonialist instincts and, as Kant suggested, refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, possibly even pursuing meaningful reforms, they could potentially be a part of a solution to many crises at their source.
In Turkey, for instance, problems such as getting a Schengen Visa are not solely a matter of identity politics; they are rooted in Europe’s historical nationalist reflexes and the resurgence of radical right-wing ideologies. Accordingly, the “perpetual peace” Kant envisioned remains largely a dream in the West, with even deliberate steps taken to prevent its realisation.
Regarding the refugee crisis, Han’s insight is particularly relevant. Hospitality is perceived and practised differently in Eastern and Western societies. In Eastern societies, the stranger’s foreignness is largely irrelevant—their origin may be of mere curiosity. Acceptance is a prerequisite. In contrast, in the West, acceptance is not a given, and the stranger’s origin is significant because Western societies have constructed and marketed their identity around this distinction. This reflects why acceptance of the foreigner—often today a refugee— is made to feel like a special privilege, like a donation.
The perception of a foreigner as an enemy merely for setting foot on foreign soil—and even beyond their foreignness—is increasingly becoming a social attitude and finds ideological justification as well. According to Kant, and as Han supports, the foreigner’s right not to be treated as foreign and strange is an essential ethical obligation of Western societies. Yet, considering colonial legacies and political agendas, this ethical standard is severely inadequate and even hypocritical. “Politics devoid of any morality reduces the EU to a marketplace or, increasingly, a store of injustice. Yet a store is not a guesthouse. Europe must urgently rise above the spirit of commerce and selfishness to demonstrate that it can function as a guesthouse.” The ideal of universal peace is an obstacle for the West, which operates along a globalisation axis while pursuing colonial agendas. Cross-border wars, arms agreements, and refugee deals serve to control domestic politics and economic parameters. Yet for this very reason, many Western countries, particularly Germany, are experiencing a migrant crisis. Germany previously managed a successful Balkanization project and partially filled gaps with incoming labour. However, the situation today is not comparable to the 1950s or 1960s. The Multi-Kulti approach often emphasised during the Merkel era has practically collapsed, giving way to the substantial rise of far-right parties, such as the AfD.
The Alienation Mechanisms of the Neoliberal Order
Alienation from the Other in the Neoliberal Sphere
It is often said that globalisation brings distant places closer. Yet within the neoliberal order, what is described as global disregards connection itself. In a state of homogenization and closure toward the Other, the disappearance of experience—a concept previously discussed—gives way, under conditions of alienation, to the disappearance of connection. Thanks to tools such as Skype and FaceTime, physical distance seems to have lost its significance; however, this obscures the fact that face-to-face contact and genuine relationships have been eroded.
Particularly in the West, the excessive xenophobia we have recently witnessed stands in stark contrast to Han’s etymological reminder that the word Europe once meant “broad vision,” or in a sense, “the place far away.” Europe—literally signifying a distant place and, for any migrant (even from within Europe itself), genuinely a far-off land—persistently reminds its foreigners that they have “come from afar.” It may not exclude them outright, but it certainly alters them, marking them as Other. This occurs not only toward outsiders but also, on an individual level, toward its own citizens.
In neoliberal and capitalist systems, the elimination of the foreigner is as desirable as the full integration of foreignness into the system is undesirable. Moreover, the individual’s alienation from themselves is likewise encouraged. Paradoxically, while European societies express discomfort toward foreigners, they simultaneously depend on them to sustain their socioeconomic systems. This is why Germany prefers policies of admitting skilled migrants over implementing internal reforms. Yet it is only possible to construct a comfort zone without accrediting, altering, or excluding the foreigner. What prompts me to say this is the unfortunate reality that, today, almost no one wishes to leave their comfort zone for someone foreign to them. To be clear, this does not mean defending states that, through misguided foreign policies, distribute citizenship to refugees or turn such policies into instruments of political gain; the issue is not ideological but human: refraining from marginalising someone solely because they are foreign.
Today, in the post-truth era dominated by mainstream and correlation-based knowledge, the individual’s alienation from themselves has also grown visibly. Although parallel to Marxist theory, this alienation differs from alienation from labour. Here, too, the term “foreigner” gives way to the “Other.” The place that most comfortably accommodates both the foreigner and the Other is again the digital sphere. On social media, this is practised through the “like.” By liking something someone else does, says, or shows, we establish a proximity from afar. It is a closeness devoid of genuine connection and experience. In this sense, it can hardly be called closeness at all. “The ordinary like is the absolute zero point of experience.” We imagine that we know and see the things we watch through the keyhole simply because the door is momentarily ajar.
Alienation from Labour and the Self
The individual’s internal alienation ultimately begins with alienation from labour. One of the most striking phrases I have heard recently captures this at a certain level: “Some people must wear suits every day so that others can wear sweatpants.” I find that this expression aptly illustrates the worker’s alienation from what they produce and, through production, from themselves. Though the form of alienation Marx described—alienation of the worker from the object they produce—remains largely valid, modern labour has taken on a far more complex character. Even the act of working itself has changed. Yet a few fundamental building blocks remain in place: labour and exploitation. Still, it is no longer possible to view the worker merely through the product they create or the value they add. Thus, alienation from the job and alienation from the object produced are distinct phenomena, though they yield similar outcomes. The worker who becomes alienated from the object is generally far from questioning the reason for this. Today, workers commonly referred to as blue-collar derive their value from their qualifications. As long as the object is produced, they are often indifferent to its nature. For instance, a worker on an assembly line may not care whether they are producing a plastic duck or a lamp. However, placing a landscape architect or sculptor in the same category would be incorrect, for their labour is (though not always, generally) directly proportional to the specificity of the product they create.
By contrast, it is possible to encounter a worker alienated from their job almost everywhere. Blue-collar workers may fall into this category, but those who predominantly experience this condition are white-collar workers—what we might call the new class of voluntary slaves. This is explained systematically and methodically in Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs. While the white-collar worker experiences alienation through the meaninglessness of their job, they also desire what they produce to serve a person or a purpose—at least more than blue-collar workers do. This luxury of questioning simultaneously becomes their curse. In proletarian societies, the worker’s inability to receive the value of their labor eliminates, in practice, their right to question; in bourgeois societies, this condition persists under the mask of corporateness. In both cases—whether blue-collar or white-collar—the worker is systematically exploited.
The Dissolution of Experience: On the Crisis of Narrative
The Erosion of Narrative in the Digital Age
In postmodern societies, it is useful to state that experience is becoming increasingly important—precisely because it is losing its significance. When we consider experience as a broad category, one of its fundamental components is narrative. Narrative may involve storytelling, conveying a message, or simply sharing a communicative act. Yet in today’s digital age, especially within social media–centred modes of communication, the value of narrative is steadily eroding. Communication has become instantaneous, superficial, and devoid of substance. Expressions such as “How are you?” or “What are you doing?” once carried the potential to establish a connection when spoken face-to-face; in digital environments, however, they have become mere empty formulas. Instantaneous content formats such as Snapchat or Instagram stories accelerate communication while rendering narrative insignificant. And yet, storytelling is an activity that supports social development and is closely linked to the individual’s desire to render their existence enduring. However, within the neoliberal system, the exploitation of labour and material insufficiency push individuals toward meeting only their basic needs; thus, experience and narrative have become luxuries. Consequently, narrative ceases to be a tool of collective progress and instead becomes the carrier of personal struggles and stress-laden everyday stories.
In neoliberal and capitalist societies, storytelling has itself been commercialised. The logic of “do it and move on” erodes not only daily life but also emotional intensity. As Han (2024b, p. 28) notes, concepts such as distance, aura, vision, and longing have been hollowed out in postmodernity. Instagram stories are nothing more than 24-hour visual diaries; posts on Snapchat disappear instantly. Today, showing has taken precedence over telling. In this sense, smartphones function as digital panopticons.
The Commercialisation of Connection and Storytelling
Although digitalisation appears to increase connections, these connections are essentially superficial network relations. Real bonds have been replaced by contactless relationships in which touch has vanished. Contrary to the digital, the issue is now very distant from the relationality contained in the act of touch. Today, most of the bonds we establish are contactless—much like the payments we make.
“Touching someone presupposes the otherness of the other, which removes them from the realm of simple accessibility. We cannot touch a consumable object; we pick it up, grasp it, or possess it. This is precisely why the smartphone, the embodied form of the digital device (the disposable object), deprives the other of their otherness and reduces them to a consumable object.”
In neoliberal societies, connection itself has been commercialised in this manner. What is lost here is not merely physical touch but the relational depth that touch symbolises. The disappearance of touch also marks the fading importance of stories, shared experiences, and forms of meaning that traditionally held communities together. In the neoliberal order, our interactions are digitally controlled. In such an environment, as relationships become increasingly mediated by screens, the narrative fabric that sustains communal life also weakens, and disconnectedness among individuals prevails. This, too, is desired by neoliberal and capitalist states because it is easier to mobilise people according to the authorities’ interests rather than the public’s interests.
“Stories create social cohesion. They generate meaning and carry the values that build community. For this reason, they must be distinguished from the narratives that constitute a regime. The narratives on which the neoliberal regime relies prevent the formation of a community.”
Narrative and storytelling may not fully prevent this decay at this point, but they can effectively slow it down.
Communities, Crowds, and the Possibility of Resistance
At this point, it is difficult to speak of a society in Turkey. At best, what exists is a crowd or a collection of individuals rather than a society. I chose this term because even the notion of community entails a set of shared values and narratives that far exceed what is found in a mere crowd. Crowds are larger than small groups in terms of numbers, yet they remain smaller than communities in both scale and depth. More importantly, they lack the relational connectedness, shared meaning, and sustained narrative coherence that characterise a community. In this sense, they occupy an intermediate and insufficient space: too large to form intimate bonds, yet too fragmented to constitute a true community. These crowds that have succeeded in becoming communities or societies are those that have partially resisted the impositions of neoliberalism and capitalism. They fall under the radar of neoliberalism and capital before they can transform into societies. These two forces exert their greatest influence on them precisely because they can mould and reshape them at will. Crowds—flexible, divisible, and easily directed—constitute the most productive target of the neoliberal order. As discussed in earlier sections, in communities where individuals assume performative identities, the We cannot emerge because the I is compelled to continuously reproduce itself. This is the greatest obstacle to becoming a society. It also makes collective action difficult to sustain. The Gezi Park Protests are, in this sense, an exceptional example in postmodern Turkey: rare moments in which communities reverse digital tools, bring contactless communication into the streets, and truly “touch” one another. For this reason, Gezi is valuable not only as a political act but also as an existential practice of resistance. In the postmodern era, this is among the forms of resistance that neoliberal regimes fear most. The fiercely stubborn and derogatory rhetoric of the authorities, as well as the citizens injured or killed due to disproportionate police violence, attest to this fear.
The Crisis of Meaning under Neoliberalism
The neoliberal regime, by separating individuals through the concepts of performance and productivity, stands fundamentally against narrative—because narrative is a community-forming value. The rise of individualism inevitably leads to the hollowing out or complete disappearance of communal narratives. This rise has also caused storytelling to succumb to commercial concerns. Narrative has been replaced by “marketable content.” For the last decade, YouTube has been the most visible example of this transformation, encouraging content consumption that is detached from emotional or spiritual depth. Yet narrative cannot be a form of consumption. To attempt to sell the story is to turn the narrative itself into a commodity. In contemporary commercial narratives, it is not the essence of the story that is emphasised but its marketable façade. As in the case of Elon Musk, success stories that obscure labour exploitation become the new myths of capitalism.
This is not only an economic problem but also a political one. Politicians, like employers, now “sell stories” rather than tell them. Yet “the absence of narratives that offer hope for the future” leads us from one crisis to another. Politics has been reduced to the task of problem-solving; yet only narratives can open the door to a new future. When humans cease to narrate and cease to strive for understanding, they dull meaning itself. To distance oneself—at least partially—from the cycle of individuality, consumption, performance, and productivity imposed by neoliberal society, and to reverse the condition of living to work rather than working to live, may be the necessary precondition for once again becoming a “community.”
Contemporary society is in the midst of a profound emotional and intellectual crisis. The neoliberal system, polished with the rhetoric of freedom and individuality, has transformed the individual into a subject who self-exploits, normalising an existence devoid of otherness, experience, and meaning. With digitalisation, the act of knowing has been replaced by spectacle, narrative by information, and collective consciousness by performance. This condition represents not merely a form of economic exploitation but also the dissolution of ethical, aesthetic, and human values. Therefore, as Han suggests, cultivating once again the “courage to encounter the Other” may be the most urgent philosophical and human necessity for reuniting experience and narrative with truth.
This analysis shows that the neoliberal subject cannot be understood solely through psychological categories or cultural tendencies, but must be situated within the broader political rationalities that structure contemporary governance. As neoliberalism disperses power into everyday practices—self-management, performance, visibility, and responsibilization—it produces subjects who internalise the imperatives of competition while simultaneously becoming detached from collective forms of agency. Byung-Chul Han’s work highlights how this shift undermines the conditions of reciprocity and recognition that political life traditionally presupposes. The weakening of narrative continuity and the expulsion of the Other are not merely cultural symptoms but indicators of a political order that prioritises security, efficiency, and calculability over solidarity and democratic contestation. The rise of exclusionary politics, xenophobic mobilisations, and securitarian state practices further demonstrates how neoliberal rationality reinforces boundaries rather than opening spaces for political plurality. Addressing the crisis of the neoliberal subject, therefore, requires rethinking political agency beyond market logics—re-establishing forms of collective meaning, institutional support, and democratic engagement capable of restoring the conditions under which political action and shared world-making become possible.
References
Han, B.-C. (2023). Capitalism and the Death Drive.
Han, B.-C. (2024). The Crisis of Narration.
Han, B.-C. (2024). The Expulsion of the Other.