Toward a Critique of Critique: Paradoxes of Byung-Chul Han and the Dialectic of Despair and Possibility
CONSTELLATIONS-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CRITICAL AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY, cilt.33, sa.2, ss.222-233, 2026 (ESCI)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 33 Sayı: 2
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1111/1467-8675.70007
- Dergi Adı: CONSTELLATIONS-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CRITICAL AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Periodicals Index Online, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Philosopher's Index, Political Science Complete, Public Affairs Index, Philosopher's Index full-text, MLA International Bibliography, Political Science Abstract (IPSA), Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Sociology Source Ultimate (EBSCO)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.222-233
- Marmara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This article interrogates the constitutive paradoxes within Byung-Chul Han's critical apparatus, contending that his diagnostic engagement with late-modern pathologies vacillates between theoretical acuity and recursive stasis. Han's melancholic framing of contemporary subjectivity suffused with themes of affective depletion, depoliticization, and the attenuation of alterity risks aestheticizing critique into a ritualized lament that forecloses transformative futurity. Concurrently, the formal and temporal dynamics of his prolific output marked by aphoristic brevity, thematic repetition, and hypercirculation, render his work complicit in the very accelerationist logics it purports to contest. Rather than operating as a vantage external to the neoliberal order, Han's discourse is situated within its circuits of visibility, legibility, and commodification. The article further examines the latent messianic impulse structuring Han's negation of utopia a gesture that simultaneously invokes and disavows the horizon of redemption. It ultimately advocates for a recalibration of critical praxis that eschews melancholic finality and discursive recursion, retaining negation as a productive ontological force that upholds the prospect of rupture without relapsing into either nihilistic resignation or affirmative teleology.