Byung-Chul Han: When producing was showing, not manufacturing

A philosophical reflection on the original meaning of production and its transformation in the performance society

We live in an age where everything must produce visible results. Our existence has become an uninterrupted succession of tasks, goals and figures that justify our place in the world. Free time is perceived as an anomaly, rest as a failure of the system, and pause as a void that must be filled as soon as possible. However, this understanding of production as constant manufacturing and accumulation of achievement was not always the case.

The South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, one of the most influential critical voices of our time, reminds us that the concept of production had a radically different meaning. Originally, producing was not synonymous with manufacturing more, but with deciding what deserved to appear to the common gaze. This seemingly subtle distinction disarticulates our entire modern conception of work, creativity, and human value.

The forgotten sense of producing

The word production did not mean manufacturing or elaboration, but exhibiting, making visible.

— Byung-Chul Han

This statement introduces a deep fissure in our way of thinking. The word produce comes from the Latin producere, composed of pro- (forward, outward) and ducere (to guide, to carry). It literally means to carry forward or bring to light. It was not about adding value, or optimizing processes, or demonstrating usefulness, but about making present something that deserved to be seen.

In its oldest sense, producing was linked to the idea of appearance. Something was produced when it ceased to be hidden and showed itself, when it entered the common space of the visible and shared. The production was not a race against time, but a gesture that put something in relation to others, an act of trust that what was shown would find its place without being forced.

This conception implied a radically different relationship with value. Not everything that was produced had to be profitable, nor did everything visible have to be justified by its function. There were gestures, deeds and words that were produced because they made sense in themselves, not because they responded to an external demand. Production was, in a way, a contemplative act that demanded attention, care, and patience.

 

Figure 1: The original meaning of producing as an act of making visible

The performance society: when freedom becomes imperative

Han describes our age as the performance society, a system where individuals are no longer exploited by external forces, but exploit themselves under the illusion of freedom. This self-exploitation is much more effective than traditional exploitation because it is accompanied by a feeling of autonomy and personal fulfillment.

The society of the twenty-first century is no longer disciplinary, but a society of performance. Its inhabitants are no longer called subjects of obedience but subjects of performance. These subjects are entrepreneurs of themselves

— Byung-Chul Han

The paradigm shift is radical. We have gone from Foucault's disciplinary societies—hospitals, prisons, barracks, factories—to a society of gymnasiums, office towers, banks, and shopping malls. Power no longer functions through external prohibitions, but through the positivity of being able to do. The imperative is no longer you must, but you can, and it is precisely that apparent freedom that chains us.

This dynamic does not work through external imposition, but through self-demand. Each person internalizes the need to produce and becomes the manager of their own exhibition. It is not enough to do something, it must be made visible, shareable, validable. The result is a form of burnout that doesn't come from physical labor, but from the constant pressure to stay active, relevant, and present.

 

Figure 2: The subject of performance as exploiter and exploited of himself

The self as a permanent project

In this context, even personal identity is transformed. The self becomes a project that must be produced relentlessly, a kind of personal brand that must be constantly cared for, updated and optimized. Producing is no longer just making things, but making oneself. And this task, far from liberating, generates tiredness, anxiety and a diffuse sense of inadequacy.

The subject of performance is trapped in a paradox: he is simultaneously master and slave of himself. He believes himself to be free because there is no explicit boss to control him, but in reality he has internalized all the control mechanisms and submits to much more relentless self-surveillance than any external supervisor.

From shared visibility to constant exposure

The problem arises when visibility ceases to be an act of openness and becomes a permanent obligation. In contemporary society, producing is no longer just showing, but demonstrating. Demonstrate competence, value, performance, relevance. Everything that is done seems to need an explicit justification, a metric that validates it.

Visibility becomes ambiguous. On the one hand, it is essential to exist socially in the digital and professional world. On the other, it becomes a constant source of pressure and evaluation. What is not shown does not seem to count, but what is shown is immediately put on trial. Production ceases to be a free act and becomes a continuous examination.

Social networks and digital platforms have exponentially intensified this dynamic. Every post, every comment, every “ like” it becomes a unit of value that feeds the need for constant exposure. Life itself is transformed into content, into material that must be continually produced, edited, and distributed for the consumption of others.

Fatigue as a symptom of the era

Han identifies tiredness as the characteristic disease of our time. But it is not a productive tiredness that leads to rest and regeneration, but a violent tiredness that destroys all community, all closeness and all shared narrative. It is a tiredness that isolates and divides, that exhausts all the senses.

Contemporary neuropsychiatric illnesses—depression, attention deficit disorder, occupational burnout syndrome—are not individual anomalies, but symptoms of a system that demands perpetual performance. Burnout is not the result of working too much, but of the structural impossibility of stopping, of the disappearance of spaces for contemplation and true rest.

Excess positivity also manifests itself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically modifies the structure and economy of care. This fragments and destroys attention.

— Byung-Chul Han

 

Figure 3: Fragmentation of attention and violent fatigue

The invisible as a lost space

When everything should produce quantifiable results, something fundamental is lost: the possibility of spaces without performance. What is not translated into visible metrics is marginalized, even if it is precisely there—in silence, waiting, contemplation—where deep reflection, genuine creativity, and authentic rest emerge.

Contemplative time, that time that produces nothing in economic terms but is essential to thought and culture, has been colonized by the logic of performance. Even leisure has become a productive activity: it must be optimized, it must generate shareable experiences, it must contribute to personal development.

The vita contemplativa, that dimension of human existence dedicated to reflection and contemplation, has been almost completely absorbed by the vita activa. There is no time to think because there is always something to do, something to produce, something to demonstrate.

Towards a new understanding of production

Recovering the original meaning of production does not mean rejecting work or idealizing the past, but questioning the reduction of all activity to quantifiable output. It means remembering that showing is not the same as demonstrating, and that making visible does not necessarily imply competing or justifying oneself to an invisible but omnipresent audience.

Han proposes what he calls a revolution of time: to recover forms of temporality that are not subject to the logic of productivity. This implies claiming the right to slowness, to pause, to contemplation. It implies recognizing that not everything valuable can be measured, and that human life needs spaces where no performance is demanded.

Han's implicit proposal is an invitation to reconcile with what appears without demanding anything in return. To allow certain things to exist without being immediately evaluated. To produce without exhausting ourselves, to show without exposing ourselves completely, to accept that not everything valuable has to yield.

 

Figure 4: The Revolution of Time and the Recovery of Contemplation

Practices of resistance: kindness as a political gesture

How can we resist a system that does not oppress us from the outside but from our own interiority? Han suggests that resistance cannot be frontal—there is no external enemy to fight—but must be articulated as a praxis of delay, as a set of practices that slow down, that interrupt the constant flow of activity.

Kindness  emerges as a political category. It is not about kindness as superficial courtesy, but about a kind look at the world that does not immediately seek to appropriate, categorize or instrumentalize what it sees. It is a form of attention that allows things to be without the need to immediately translate them into value or utility.

This kindness implies recovering the ability to stop, to contemplate without purpose, to establish relationships that are not mediated by the logic of exchange. It involves psychologically dismantling the mechanisms of the performance society through small daily gestures that recover other ways of being in the world.

Conclusion: Producing as an act of appearance

In a world saturated with activity and forced visibility, rethinking production as an act of appearance can be a discreet but radical form of resistance. A way of remembering that, before manufacturing results and accumulating metrics, producing consisted simply of making visible what deserved to be seen.

It is not a question of rejecting technology, work or productivity in themselves, but of questioning their totalization. It is a matter of recovering spaces where human life can unfold in dimensions that are not immediately translatable into performance: deep thought, artistic creation without market expectations, human relationships without instrumental purpose, genuine rest.

Byung-Chul Han's philosophy invites us to recognize that we live in an age of positive violence, where the imperative to be able to do has become a more subtle form of domination but no less effective than the forms of disciplinary power of the past. And it challenges us to imagine and practice ways of life that are not entirely subsumed under the logic of performance.

Perhaps the most urgent task of our time is to learn anew how to produce in the original sense of the term: not to make more, but to discern what deserves to appear. Not to constantly prove our worth, but to trust that some things make sense on their own. Not to expose ourselves relentlessly, but to cultivate spaces of invisibility where we can simply be.

To produce is not to accumulate objects, but to choose what deserves to be put on display. Sometimes, making visible consists of removing everything else.

Conceptual references

Byung-Chul Han's key works:

• The Fatigue Society (2010) — Analysis of the transformation of disciplinary societies into performance societies.

• The Transparency Society (2012) — Critique of the contemporary obsession with total visibility.

• The Agony of Eros (2012) — On the disappearance of desire and otherness in narcissistic society.

• Psychopolitics (2014) — Analysis of neoliberalism as a form of psychic domination.

• The Expulsion of the Different (2016) — On the Loss of Otherness and Genuine Difference.

• The Scent of Time (2009) — Philosophy of temporalities and the crisis of narrative time.

Key concepts developed in the article:

Performance society: Social system characterized by the self-exploitation of subjects who believe themselves to be free but who have internalized the mechanisms of constant control and evaluation.

Violence of positivity: A form of violence that does not come from external prohibition but from an excess of stimuli, from the imperative to be able to do, from the obligation to constantly perform.

Vita contemplativa: Dimension of human existence dedicated to reflection, contemplation and deep thought, which has been colonized by the logic of performance.

Praxis of delay: A set of practices that slow down the frenetic pace of the performance society and recover non-productive forms of temporality.

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