Foucault, Derrida, Han and the Philosophy of Belonging: historicity, language, psychopolitics and ontology of the bond

Contemporary philosophy of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first has been marked by a profound critical movement against the modern subject, universalist humanism, and the idea of stable foundations of knowledge and social life. In this context, the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Byung-Chul Han represent three decisive moments of this intellectual transformation. Each one, from a different angle, has shown that the individual, truth, power, meaning and subjectivity are not natural or permanent entities, but historical, linguistic and social configurations. Foucault revealed the radical historicity of institutions, systems of knowledge and forms of subjectivation, showing that the modern subject is a construction situated within relations of power. Derrida took this critique even further by demonstrating that every conceptual system is founded on a priori principles that cannot be proven and that language does not reflect a prior reality, but structures the very field of what can be thought. Han, for his part, described the passage from the disciplinary society to the performance society and psychopolitics, where the subject is no longer repressed from the outside but exploits himself from within, producing a generalized scenario of fatigue, depression and loneliness. However, although these philosophies offer extraordinarily powerful diagnoses about the historicity of power, language and subjectivity, they share a common limit: they lack a positive ontology of the bond that allows explaining why the rupture of social structures produces suffering, disintegration and loss of meaning. By concentrating on historical relativity, linguistic mediation, or the mutation of power, these approaches tend to dissolve the individual into conceptual systems, discourses, or processes of subjectivation, without being able to fully explain the persistence of certain structural traits of human existence. The Philosophy of Belonging proposes a different path. It accepts the critical diagnosis of these authors, but introduces a fundamental ontological thesis: the human being does not exist as a self-sufficient entity, but as a relational particular. To be is to belong. Belonging is not a moral value nor a secondary cultural construction, but a condition of biological, social and temporal existence. The individual exists as a creative particular, but can only subsist within networks of bond that provide continuity, identity, meaning and possibility of action. From this perspective, the historicity of power described by Foucault, the historicity of language analyzed by Derrida and the subjective collapse diagnosed by Han can be reinterpreted as partial dimensions of a deeper process: the transformation and, in many cases, the rupture of the structures of belonging that have historically sustained human life. Contemporary fatigue is not only psychological, nor exclusively political, nor purely cultural. It is ontological. It is the result of a way of life in which the individual is progressively separated from stable bonds, enduring institutions and relational structures that organized his existence. The Philosophy of Belonging also introduces a decisive distinction between two dimensions of time: diachrony, which corresponds to the historicity of conceptual systems, and synchrony, which corresponds to the network of relations between particulars at a given moment. Foucault and Derrida have explained with enormous depth the diachrony of meaning and power, but have paid little attention to the relational synchrony that allows the continuity of social life. Without this dimension, it becomes difficult to explain the accumulation of scientific knowledge, the relative stability of institutions and the universal need for social integration. The article argues that power, language and psychopolitics are real and decisive dimensions of social life, but they do not constitute its primary ontological foundation. The fundamental relation between individual and group is not power, nor discourse, nor self-exploitation: it is belonging. Power appears when belonging is instrumentalized; language organizes meaning within belonging; and psychopolitics emerges when structures of bond weaken and the individual is forced to sustain himself. From a psychological point of view, this rupture manifests itself in the expansion of depression, anxiety and structural loneliness. From an economic point of view, it is expressed in the precarization of work and in the loss of stable economic belongings. From a political point of view, it is reflected in institutional fragmentation and in the growing difficulty of producing lasting forms of collective integration. In all these planes, contemporary malaise can be interpreted as a crisis of belonging. This work integrates and expands the analyses of Foucault, Derrida and Han within a broader ontological framework that allows understanding simultaneously the historicity of social systems, the linguistic mediation of knowledge and contemporary subjective collapse, without renouncing the affirmation of the existence of the individual as a biological-relational particular nor the idea that knowledge can accumulate through time through interaction with an external reality. The central thesis that articulates the whole text can be formulated synthetically: Foucault explains the historicity of power, Derrida the historicity of meaning and Han the exhaustion of the contemporary subject. The Philosophy of Belonging, by contrast, introduces an ontology of the bond that allows understanding why the loss of stable relational structures produces psychological, economic and social disintegration. Where contemporary philosophy has deconstructed traditional foundations, the Philosophy of Belonging proposes an empirically grounded ontological reconstruction: the individual exists as a particular, but can only exist within real belongings. This article has been written with the assistance of ChatGPT.