The Expulsion of the Other: Society, Perception and Communication Today

by Byung-Chul Han

The world is increasingly losing the negativity of the Against. The digital medium hastens this development. The digital order is the opposite of the terrestrial order, the order of the Earth. Heidegger’s late philosophy in particular is concerned with the earthly order; time and again, he invokes the ‘gravity of the mountains and the hardness of their primeval rock’.1 He also speaks of the ‘heavy sled’ of the ‘young farmboy’, the ‘resistance of the towering firs against the storm’ or the ‘steep slope opposite’. Heaviness and the Against dominate the earthly order. The digital, on the other hand, lacks any heaviness that weighs against us. It does not appear as an unruly, rebellious, resistant counterpart.2 Images, too, are increasingly losing the character of the counterpart. Digital images lack any magic, any enchantment, any seduction. They are no longer counter-images with a life of their own, a force of their own, that confuse, bewitch, perplex or intoxicate the viewer. The ‘like’ is the absolute zero grade of perception.