The Fiction of Freedom

At his October 2025 Princess of Asturias Award press conference in Oviedo, Han crystallized three decades of diagnosis into a single formulation: we live under a fictitious freedom based on self-exploitation. The phrase names a specific structure rather than a generic complaint. The achievement subject experiences himself as free because no external authority constrains him. He is not in a factory; he chose his work. He is not coerced; he is motivated. He is not surveilled; he exhibits. And precisely this subjective experience of freedom is the mechanism by which his unfreedom is secured. If he felt unfree, he might resist. Because he feels free, the exploitation travels unobstructed through his own desire.