Transparency, Society and Subjectivity

“Incessantly invoked as a necessary condition of all aspects of democratic life,

transparency is being hailed as a top priority in public management, corporate
business, and international relations. But the more we critically examine what
transparency actually means, the more it emerges as an opaque, and perhaps
even occluding, concept. By offering a bold and comprehensive picture of the
new field of Critical Transparency Studies, this collection of essays is certain to
become the standard reference for years to come.”
—Giovanna Borradori, Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College, USA

“This important collection historicizes and criticizes transparency, one of neolib-

eralism’s most ubiquitous norms. As the contributors draw out the normative
presumptions of the concept, they alert us to its regulatory effects, its implica-
tions for surveillance and subjectivation. Rather than an ideal of democratic
freedom, transparency mobilizes distrust and commands exposure. Crucial read-
ing for anyone interested in critical assessment of our present values.”
—Jodi Dean, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, USA, and author of
Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy (2002)
 Emmanuel Alloa  •  Dieter Thomä
Editors

Transparency, Society
and Subjectivity
Critical Perspectives
Editors
Emmanuel Alloa Dieter Thomä
School for Humanities and Social Sciences School for Humanities and Social Sciences
University of St. Gallen University of St. Gallen
St. Gallen, Switzerland St. Gallen, Switzerland

ISBN 978-3-319-77160-1    ISBN 978-3-319-77161-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8

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 Contents

 ransparency: Thinking Through an Opaque Concept   1

T
Emmanuel Alloa and Dieter Thomä

 ot such Wicked Leaks  15

N
Umberto Eco

Part I  Transparency in the Making   19

 ransparency: A Magic Concept of Modernity  21

T
Emmanuel Alloa

 eeing It All, Doing It All, Saying It All: Transparency, Subject,

S
and the World  57
Dieter Thomä

 he Dream of Transparency: Aquinas, Rousseau, Sartre  85

T
Manfred Schneider

v
vi  Contents

 he Unbounded Confession 105
T
Noreen Khawaja

 eeing It All: Bentham’s Panopticon and the Dark Spots

S
of Enlightenment 133
Miran Božovič

 ransparency, Humanism, and the Politics of the Future Before

T
and After May ’68 155
Stefanos Geroulanos

Part II  Under the Crystal Dome  177

 he Limits of Transparency 179
T
Amitai Etzioni

 ublicity and Transparency: The Itinerary of a Subtle

P
Distinction 203
Sandrine Baume

 egulation and Transparency as Rituals of Distrust: Reading

R
Niklas Luhmann Against the Grain 225
Caspar Hirschi

 ot Individuals, Relations: What Transparency Is Really

N
About. A Theory of Algorithmic Governmentality 243
Thomas Berns

Obfuscated Transparency 259
Dieter Mersch
  Contents 
   vii

 he Privatization of Human Interests or, How Transparency

T
Breeds Conformity 283
Thomas Docherty

Part III  From the Panopticon to the Selfie and Back  305

 ransparency and Subjectivity: Remembering Jennifer

T
Ringley 307
Vincent Kaufmann

 utting Oneself Out There: The “Selfie” and the Alter-Rithmic

P
Transformations of Subjectivity 323
Jörg Metelmann and Thomas Telios

Interrupting Transparency 343
Clare Birchall

 irtual Transparency: From the Panopticon to the Expository

V
Society and Beyond 369
Bernard E. Harcourt

Author Index 393

Subject Index 403
 About the Contributors

Emmanuel  Alloa  is Research Leader in Philosophy at the University of St.

Gallen.
Sandrine  Baume  is Associate Professor at the Centre for Public Law in the
Faculty of Law and Criminal Justice at the University of Lausanne.
Thomas Berns  is Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy and Ethics at the Free
University of Brussels (ULB).
Clare Birchall  is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Culture in the Department
of English at King’s College London.
Miran Božovič  is Professor of Early modern philosophy at the Faculty of Arts
of the University of Ljubljana.
Thomas Docherty  is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the
University of Warwick.
Umberto Eco  (†) was a novelist, literary critic and professor in semiotics at the
University of Bologna.
Amitai  Etzioni  is Professor of International Affairs at George Washington
University.
Stefanos Geroulanos  is Associate Professor of European History at New York
University, and Director of the Center for International Research in the
Humanities and Social Sciences.

ix
x  About the Contributors

Bernard  E.  Harcourt  is Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at

Columbia University and Director of the Columbia Center for Contemporary
Critical Thought.
Caspar Hirschi  is Professor of History at the University St. Gallen.
Vincent Kaufmann  is Professor of French Literature, Media and Culture at the
University of St. Gallen.
Noreen Khawaja  is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University.
Dieter Mersch  is Philosophy chair and Head of the Institute for Theory at the
Zurich University of the Arts.
Jörg  Metelmann  is Associate Professor of Culture and Media Studies at the
University of St. Gallen.
Manfred Schneider  is Professor of German Literature at the Ruhr-Universität
Bochum.
Thomas Telios  is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St. Gallen.
Dieter Thomä  is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Gallen.