The Violence of Positivity

Han's concept of the violence of positivity inverts the received understanding of freedom and constraint. We are trained to think violence is negative — punishment, prohibition, deprivation. Han argues that positivity is violence in its most sophisticated form. The subject told you can do anything has no limit against which to define himself, no prohibition to rebel against, no stopping point imposed from outside. He must exhaust himself against the limitlessness of his own potential. The violence of negativity has a face — the guard, the warden, the boss — that can be named and confronted. The violence of positivity has no face. There is only the self, pushing against the limits of its own potential, driven by an imperative from within.