Capital acceleration requires suppressing immune defences against otherness

Evidence

The idiot is idiosyncratic. Literally, idiosyncrasy refers to a specific and peculiar mixture of the body’s humours and the oversensitivity this entails. When communication is to be accelerated, idiosyncrasy poses an obstacle inasmuch as it amounts to an immunological defence against the Other. Idiosyncrasy stands in the way of unbounded communicative exchange. Accordingly, immunosuppression is necessary for acceleration to proceed. But now, immune responses are subjected to massive suppression so that information will circulate faster and capital will accelerate. Communication achieves maximum velocity when the Same reacts to the Same. In contrast, the resistance and recalcitrance of otherness, of foreignness, troubles and impedes the smooth communication of the Same. In the Inferno of the Same, communication attains its highest speed. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 186

Categorization

• XREF: Full payoff of Han’s earlier immunity-metaphor critique of the obsessional/autoimmune disorders in The Burnout Society, where the immune era gives way to neurological violence. — connects to: Surplus Same cannot be warded off by immune-style defense mechanisms — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 19; A rationality geared to domination shapes how we construe the Other — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 464; Twentieth-century society organized itself by immune-style rejection of foreignness — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 10
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that idiosyncrasy-as-immunity must be suppressed for capital to accelerate — and that ‘the Same reacts to the Same’ is maximum speed — is a dense, paradigm-level diagnosis contrasting speed-of-sameness against recalcitrant otherness.

Related

• Surplus Same cannot be warded off by immune-style defense mechanisms (similarity 0.81)
• Twentieth-century society organized itself by immune-style rejection of foreignness (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Surplus Same cannot be warded off by immune-style defense mechanisms #contradicts (0.75) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 19
• A rationality geared to domination shapes how we construe the Other #expands (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 464
• Twentieth-century society organized itself by immune-style rejection of foreignness #exemplifies (0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 10