![]() But through social media the neoliberal form of life is also expanding across the Third World. The Burnout Society mainly concerns Western neoliberal societies and not the situation of the Chinese factory worker. I agree with Žižek that this relocation has taken place. In this chapter, Žižek takes issue with my book The Burnout Society, arguing that exploitation by others has not been replaced by self-exploitation but has only been relocated to Third World countries. In his book Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World, Slavoj Žižek dedicates a whole chapter to the question “Why are we tired all the time?” Žižek clearly also senses that the pandemic has made us tired. It is now making even healthy people tired. One patient reports: “It actually feels as if the mobile were only 4 percent charged, and you really only have 4 percent for the whole day, and it cannot be recharged.”īut the virus doesn’t only make Covid sufferers tired. When walking, they have to make frequent stops to catch their breath. They have to exert themselves just to pour a glass of water. Those affected are no longer able to work and perform. And there are more and more reports of patients who have recovered but are continuing to suffer severe long-term symptoms, one of which is “chronic fatigue syndrome.” The expression “the batteries no longer charge” describes it very well. The illness seems to simulate fundamental tiredness. What is uncanny about Covid-19 is that those who catch it suffer from extreme tiredness and fatigue. We’re at the Beginning of the End of Covid-19. In a certain respect, neoliberalism is based on self-flagellation. In one of his aphorisms he writes: “The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.” This permanent self-flagellation makes us tired and, ultimately, depressed. Kafka expressed with great clarity the paradox of the freedom of the slave who thinks he is the master. Self-exploitation is more efficient than exploitation by others because it goes hand in hand with a feeling of freedom. The achievement society exploits freedom itself. The disciplinary society with its commandments and prohibitions, as analyzed by Michel Foucault in his Discipline and Punish, does not describe today’s achievement society. The neoliberal achievement society makes exploitation possible even without domination. It is an absolute slave insofar as it voluntarily exploits itself, even without a master being present. The achievement subject believes that it is free but it is actually a slave. This absurd logic ultimately leads to a breakdown. But, of course, it is impossible to get ahead of oneself. Once we have achieved something, we want to achieve more, that is, we want to get ahead of ourselves yet again. The insidious logic of achievement permanently forces us to get ahead of ourselves. We realize ourselves, optimize ourselves unto death. But we actually exploit ourselves passionately until we collapse. They are a pathological signal, indicating that freedom today often turns into compulsion. Psychological disorders such as depression or burnout are symptoms of a deep crisis of freedom.
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