Is the thought of Byung-Chul Han really critical of neoliberalism? The problem of present as a dead end crisis

Abstract

This attemps to be a critical essay on the thinking of Byung-Chul Han. Through a comprehensive reading of his research about present time and temporality as a philosophical problem, this article will try to restore the main hypotheses of the author in orderto give an account for the tenor of its theoretical, methodological and political implications. Han's perspective is thus settledon a category binarism, which, despite its fixing nature, has the ability to continually move its classifications, so as to capture all the possibilities of inventiveness. Our starting hypothesis is that this mobility seeks to produce a "liquid grammar" that is functional to the logic of production of differences promoted in our neoliberal societies. The development of the article will test this reading route, especially focusing on Han's treatment of the notion of "time crisis" as "dyssynchrony" incapable of producing a bifurcated action. From a recovery of the etymological legacy of "crisis" the inertia of the political effects of this perspective will be revealed, seeking to "critically" re-locatethe terms of its necessary debate.