Psychopolitics in Martin Crimp's No One Sees the Video

Abstract

Byung-Chul Han is a contemporary South Korean-German philosopher known for his work on the intersection of philosophy, culture, and technology. Along with the burnout society, the transparency society, the palliative society, and the infocracy, one of his essential concepts is psychopolitics, which refers to the methods and strategies employed by ruling classes to exert political and economic control over human psychology to better understand individual behaviour within a community. It explores how capitalism, emphasizing personal responsibility and productivity, has led to the internalization of oppressive structures and the erosion of collective resistance. Martin Crimp's theatre is at the confluence of late twentieth-century capitalism and early twenty-first-century neoliberalism. In No One Sees the Video, one of the most distinguished plays ever written in the post-wall period on late capitalism, Martin Crimp portrays a world in decay under the control of psycho-power, as Byung-Chul Han pinpoints. He carefully shows the impact of consumerism addiction on individuals imposed by capitalism, highlighting the role of the human psyche. The purpose of this study is to investigate Martin Crimp's portrayal of psychopolitics in No One Sees the Video.