Byung Chul Han

In Asia, digital surveillance has proved an effective and necessary tactic in the battle to contain and supress Covid-19. In his new book Capitalism and the Death Drive, Byung-Chul Han traces Western liberalism’s complicated – and often inconsistent – relationship with this form of social governance.

Text by Byung-Chul Han

The threat of terrorism means we have grown accustomed to accepting, without protest, even the most humiliating security measures at airports. With hands in the air, we allow our bodies to be scanned. We allow ourselves to be searched for concealed weapons. Every one of us is a potential terrorist. The virus is a terror in the air. It represents a far graver threat than Islamist terrorism. It is almost a matter of the inexorable logic of the pandemic that society will be transformed into a permanent security zone, into a quarantine station in which everyone is treated as though they are infected.

In the course of the pandemic, Europe and the US have begun to lose their lustre. They are struggling. They seem not to be able to get a grip on the pandemic. By contrast, Asian countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Japan have brought the pandemic under control relatively quickly. What is the reason for this? What systemic advantages do these Asian countries possess? The virus spreads easily in the liberal societies of Europe and the US. Is liberalism, then, the reason for Europe’s failure? Is the virus comfortable within the liberal system?

It will soon become clear that, in battling the pandemic, it is necessary to proceed at the micro-level, that is, to focus on individuals. But liberalism makes this difficult. A liberal society consists of individuals and their spaces of freedom, which the state is not allowed to access. Data protection alone is enough to prevent the surveillance of individuals at the micro-level. In a liberal society, the individual cannot be made the object of surveillance, so the only option is a complete shutdown, with all the serious economic implications this entails. A truly fateful insight will soon dawn on the West: that only a biopolitics that allows for unlimited access to the individual can prevent shutdowns, that it is exactly the protected private sphere which provides the protected space for the virus. This insight, however, spells the end of liberalism.

The Asians have dealt with the virus with a rigour and discipline that is unimaginable to Europeans. The individual is the focus of surveillance; that is the main difference from the European fight against the pandemic. The rigorous measures implemented in Asia are reminiscent of the disciplinary measures implemented during the Great Plague in 17th-century Europe. Michel Foucault provided an impressive description of these measures in his analysis of the disciplinary society. Houses were locked from the outside, and the keys handed to the authorities. The penalty for those who tried to escape quarantine was death. Stray animals were killed. The surveillance was total, and absolute obedience was demanded. Houses were checked one by one, with inhabitants having to appear at a window. Those living at the rear of a house and who did not have a window facing the street were allocated one. Names were read out, and everyone was asked to report their state of health. Those who lied faced the death penalty. A comprehensive registration system was created. Space congealed into a network of impermeable cells. Everyone was tied to their place. Those who moved risked their lives.

In the 17th century, Europe developed into a disciplinary society. Biopolitical power crept into the most trivial aspects of life. Society as a whole was transformed into a panopticon; it was permeated by the panoptical gaze. The memory of these disciplinary measures has completely faded. In fact, they went much further than the measures adopted by China in the face of the pandemic. But, one might say, the Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries is not the China of today. China has created a digital disciplinary society. It has a social-scoring system that makes possible the complete biopolitical surveillance and control of the population. No aspect of everyday life remains unobserved. Each click, each purchase, each contact, each activity on social media is subject to surveillance. There are 200 million surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology in operation. Those who run a red light, meet up with people who oppose the regime, or post critical comments on social media live dangerously. But those who buy healthy food or read newspapers loyal to the party are rewarded with easy credit, cheaper health insurance or travel permits. Such comprehensive surveillance is possible in China because internet and mobile-phone providers pass on all of their data to the authorities. The state thus knows where I am, who I am meeting, what I am doing, what I am looking for, what I am thinking, what I am buying, what I am eating. It is conceivable that, in the future, body temperature, weight, blood-sugar levels, et cetera, will also be controlled by the state.

This comprehensive digital surveillance of the population has proved to be highly effective in fighting the virus. When you leave the train station in Beijing, you are captured by a camera that registers your body temperature. If it turns out that you have a fever, the people who were sitting in the same train carriage are automatically informed via their mobile phones – the system knows, of course, where everyone was sitting. There are even reports on social media of drones being used to enforce quarantine. If someone attempts to slip out of their apartment, a drone approaches to instruct the person to return home. Perhaps the drone could one day even print a fine and deliver it into the person’s hands – who knows? In the battle against the pandemic, a paradigm shift seems to be taking place, one that has not been sufficiently appreciated by the West: it is being digitalised. The pandemic is being fought not only by virologists and epidemiologists but, in large part, by IT and big-data specialists.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Lovesick (2019). Courtesy Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Fridman Gallery, New York

In the battle against the virus, the individual is under surveillance as an individual. There is an app that allocates a coloured QR code to every individual, indicating their state of health. Red means two weeks of quarantine. Only those with a green code are allowed to move freely. And it is not only China; other Asian countries have also banked on individual surveillance. A variety of data is collated in order to detect those who might be infected. The South Korean government is even considering making it compulsory for people in quarantine to wear digital bracelets that would allow them to be monitored around the clock, a kind of surveillance that was previously used only for sex offenders. In the pandemic everyone is treated like a potential criminal.

The Asian model of how to fight the virus is not compatible with Western liberalism. The pandemic has revealed the cultural differences between Asia and Europe. In Asia, we still have a disciplinary society, a collectivism with a strong tendency towards discipline. Radical disciplinary measures that would be roundly rejected by Europeans can be easily implemented. They are experienced not as infringements of individual rights but as the fulfilment of collective duties. Countries like China or Singapore are autocratic regimes. And it was only a few decades ago that South Korea and Taiwan were autocratic regimes, too. Authoritarian regimes teach the people to be obedient disciplinary subjects. And Asia is formed by Confucianism, which demands absolute obedience to authority. All these peculiarities of Asian culture turn out to be systemic advantages when it comes to containing the virus. Does this mean the Asian form of disciplinary society will prevail as the pandemic continues?

But we do not need to refer to Asia to point out the dangers the pandemic has created for Western liberalism. Panoptical surveillance is not an exclusively Asian phenomenon. We are all already living in a global digital panopticon. Social media increasingly resembles a panopticon that monitors and ruthlessly exploits its users. We expose ourselves voluntarily. The disclosure of data is not coerced; it follows from an inner need. We are constantly asked to share our opinions, preferences and needs – to tell our life story. This data then becomes the object of ruthless commercial exploitation by the digital platforms, which use it to predict and manipulate our behaviour.

Lovesick (2019). Courtesy Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Fridman Gallery, New York

We live under a digital feudalism. The digital feudal lords, like Facebook, give us some land and say: “You can have it for free. Cultivate it.” And we cultivate it exhaustively. At the end of it all, our feudal lords return for the harvest. This is a surveillance and exploitation of all communication. The system is extremely efficient. No one protests against it, because the system exploits freedom itself.

Surveillance capitalism transforms capitalism itself. Platforms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon constantly monitor and manipulate us in order to maximise their profits. Every click is registered and analysed. We are controlled like puppets on algorithmic strings. At the same time, we feel free. There is a dialectics of freedom here: freedom turns into serfdom. Is this still a form of liberalism?

At this point, we need to ask: given that this digital surveillance machinery is already up and running, why should it stop short of the virus? It is likely that the pandemic will break down the psychological barrier which has hitherto prevented the biopolitical expansion of surveillance into the sphere of the individual. Because of the pandemic, we are heading towards a biopolitical regime of surveillance. Digital surveillance will monitor not only our communication but also our bodies, our state of health. The digital surveillance society will undergo a biopolitical expansion.

According to Naomi Klein, the moment of shock is the perfect time to establish a new system of rule. The shock of the pandemic will ensure that a digital biopolitics, a biopolitical disciplinary society, will prevail at the global level. It will take hold of our bodies and constantly monitor our state of health. What is more, it is quite possible that, within this biopolitical surveillance regime, we will feel free. After all, we might say, all these surveillance measures are only in the interests of our own health. Domination comes into its own at the point where it coincides with freedom. Amid the shock of the pandemic, will the West feel forced to abandon its liberal principles? Are we threatened by the imminent emergence of a biopolitical quarantine society that will place enduring limits on our freedom? In other words: is China Europe’s future? ◉

Extracted from Byung-Chul Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive, translated by Daniel Steuer, (Polity: May 2021)

Lovesick (2019) is a multimedia portrait of an actual “love” virus that, after infection, increases the body’s production of oxytocin – the hormone responsible for feelings of empathy and bonding. At its most complete installation, the Lovesick virus is displayed in glass vial sculptures accompanied by videos made with cellular microscopy, and a polyphonic ballad score, which the artist and her partner sing intoning the letters of the proteins comprising oxytocin, “CYIQNCPLG”.

Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Her practice anticipates the role genetic data collection and engineering will play in shaping human psychology, relationships and aesthetics in the future.

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