Why Originality is a Myth: Byung-Chul Han's Shanzhai
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.พ. 2024
- Byung-Chul Han is one of the most interesting and provactive philosophers alive today. This is a video lecture of sorts about Byung-Chul Han's short book Shanzhai and my interpretation of his concepts.
Also my bad if I messed up any of the Chinese or Japanese pronunciations. I tried to check how they were said where possible
I thank you for this video. It's rare to see someone who touched on Han's lesser known works, especially Shanzhai. It's very different to his recent critique of neoliberalism. Perhaps Han's concept of de-creation shines light on the current issue about AI art, intellectual property and the copyright system. And perhaps, as you also explained in the video, Han unveils our fetishism with the original genius artist and showed how the novel is not sudden event, but always created through engagement with past works, collaboration and slow hard work. Keep up with the video and good luck to your channel man!
Yeah, there are some delusional people who think that they are very special. That they are fundamentally unique and separate from time. Contributing something that is entirely disconnected from the past and comes solely from themselves. Usually from their soul which transcends space and time. Of course everyone is unique but simultaneously completely interconnected with everything else. So, there is no absolute uniqueness but relative uniqueness.
The point at 18:23 reminds me of the passage in Don Dellio’s White Noise, in where two characters go visit the “most photographed barn in America.” One of the characters points out how no one visiting the barn is able to see the barn as it was before it got that title. Enjoyed the video 👍
This video reminded me of Spinoza's view about everything being a manifestation of God himself, and therefore, there truly is no contradiction between original and reproduction, between Plato's ideas and Zen-Buddhist thought, between the West and the East: they are just manifestations of God, or of the apparent order of the universe at a given moment. Brilliant video. Brazilian greetings, already waiting for the next ones.

Wonderful video! Please make more! This is such precious content… 🙏🏽
This video was fascinating, please keep making things!
I'm working on stuff haha. Trying to focus on quality over quantity
Really great video. As a working artist in the west, so many of these ideas rocked me (in the best way). Really glad you shone a light on this work, looking forward to giving it a read!
Yes please give it a read yourself! We should all build our own interpretations :)
This differing view of originality in the East and West is fascinating. I’ve read a bit about Chinese landscape painting and the Western concept is ego based. The prices that Western paintings fetch at auction would indicate that they’re the idols of our time.
Thank you for providing such a thoughtful analysis and presenting it in a way that was engaging and relevant. Inspiring.
Thank you for your kind comment! That's exactly what I was trying to do.
Nice. Do a video on Hegel and make him look this cool.
I could do a video on Hegel! Just give me ten years to do the appropriate level of research. Haha
Most interesting video, thanks for making it
thanks so much..
amazing videod
Its very important that your analyses is truth about the west after the enlightment. This was not the case in the middle age. Very important.
Awesome video, thanks! Somne very interesting takes. I am wondering though, to what extent the shanzai products (i.e. cell phones) is really an act of subversion/playfulness or rather an extension of capitalist competitive dynamics. I mean, in recent years Chinese smart phone companies have become huge, using, as all the Western ones do, methods of brutal exploitation.
That's a very good point. I kind of hint at this with seeing Deng Xiaoping as the counter-revolutionary effect of Shanzhai
very interesting presentation, thank you. I do not however agree with the idea that museification intrinsically repurposes a space. That kinda ignores the purpose of preserving something for reliving; reliving something is a feat of imagination so really the main distinction between east and west could rather be cognitive and cultural second
May I ask what is the art work ar 3:20? Is beautiful
It's called Divine Redwood Trees by Chang Dai-chien :)
At 24:00
I was reminded of a scene in Blood Meridian:
“This other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end.”