Cover: Non-things by Byung-Chul Han

Non-things

Upheaval in the Lifeworld

Byung-Chul Han


Translated by Daniel Steuer











polity

PREFACE

In her novel Hisoyaka na Kesshō, the Japanese writer Yōko Ogawa tells the story of a nameless island.1 Strange occurrences alarm its inhabitants: things disappear without explanation, and they disappear for good. Things that smell nice, and shimmering, glittering, wondrous things: hairbands, hats, perfume, small bells, emeralds, stamps – roses and birds too. And the people no longer know what all these things were once for. Along with the things, memories disappear as well.

Yōko Ogawa’s novel describes a totalitarian regime whose memory police, reminiscent of Orwell’s thought police, purge society of things and memories. The people live in an eternal winter of forgetfulness and loss. Anyone found to be reminiscing is arrested. The protagonist’s mother, who keeps threatened things in a secret chest of drawers, and in this way protects them, is chased and killed by the memory police.

There are strong analogies between Hisoyaka na Kesshō, published in 1994, and our contemporary life. Today, things are also constantly disappearing, without us seeming to notice. Because the number of things has proliferated, we do not realize that, in fact, things are disappearing. In contrast to Yōko Ogawa’s dystopia, we do not live in a totalitarian regime whose memory police brutally rob us of our things and memories. It is rather our intoxication by communication and information that makes things disappear. Information – that is, non-things – obscures things and drains them of their colour. We live not under a violent regime but under a rule of information that claims to be freedom.

In Ogawa’s dystopia, the world is gradually emptied out. Ultimately, it disappears. Everything is seized by disappearance, by a progressive dissolution. Even body parts disappear. In the end, there are just disembodied voices aimlessly floating in the air. In many respects, the nameless island of lost things and memories resembles our present. Today’s world is fading away and becoming information, information as ghostly as those disembodied voices. Digitalization de-reifies and disembodies the world. It also abolishes memory. Instead of memory, we have vast quantities of data. In the place of the memory police, we have digital media, which does its job without violence and with little effort.

Our information society is not quite as monotonous as Ogawa’s dystopia. Information creates the illusion of a series of events. Information feeds off of our attraction towards surprise. But the attraction does not last long; soon, there is a need for a new surprise. We are now in the habit of perceiving reality in terms of attraction and surprise. As information hunters, we are becoming blind to still, inconspicuous things, to what is common, the incidental and the customary – the things that do not attract us but ground us in being.

Note

  1. 1. Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police, London: Vintage, 2020.