Transparency Society and Subjectivity 1St Ed Edition Emmanuel Alloa Ebook Full Chapter

Transparency, Society and Subjectivity
1st ed. Edition Emmanuel Alloa

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/transparency-society-and-subjectivity-1st-ed-edition-e
mmanuel-alloa/
Edited by
Emmanuel Alloa and
Dieter Thomä
TRANSPARENCY,
SOCIETY AND
SUBJECTIVITY
Critical Perspectives
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 of Humanities and Social Sciences School of 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
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937890
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: BubbleTree, www.bubbletree.fr, Pierre-Stéphane Dumas
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International
Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
Transparency: Thinking Through an Opaque Concept 1

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
Notes on 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 Notes on 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.
List of Figures
Transparency: A Magic Concept of Modernity

Fig. 1 Hajo Rose, Untitled [Self-Portrait with Dessau Façade (double
exposure)], 1930. © Hajo Rose Estate and Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst 26
Fig. 2 László Moholy-Nagy, Space Modulator [Transparency Plus!], 1940,
33.7 × 25.4 cm. Private Collection. Photo: Milton Halberstadt 50
Fig. 3 Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The growth of the
new tradition, 2nd edition Cambridge: The Harvard University
Press, 1949, pp. 426–427 51
Publicity and Transparency: The Itinerary of a Subtle Distinction
Fig. 1 Google Books Ngram Viewer, instances of publicity and transparency,
1800–2008. Source: Ngram/Sandrine Baume 205
Virtual Transparency: From the Panopticon to the Expository Society
and Beyond
Fig. 1 Dan Graham, Günther Vogt Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout,
Installation Metropolitan Museum, New York, (2014). Photographs
copyright © Tod Seelie, reproduced by permission 379
xi
Transparency: Thinking Through
an Opaque Concept
Emmanuel Alloa and Dieter Thomä
In his novel The Circle (2013), acclaimed fiction writer Dave Eggers pres-
ents the reader with an almost Orwellian vision of a near future of a
totally transparent society. Eggers’ vision, later adapted as a Hollywood
screenplay and brought to the big screen by Emma Watson and Tom
Hanks, is set in Silicon Valley, and revolves around a company—The
Circle—which embodies all the promises of a tech-driven society. For
The Circle (depicted as decidedly vicious), all behavior can been driven
by an algorithm. The trinitarian dogma of Orwell’s 1984 echoes unmis-
takably in Dave Eggers’ novel. Whereas in 1984, the surveillance state
had proclaimed that “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is
strength,” in the new, libertarian and Web 2.0 version of the surveillance
state, the credo is summarized in the following mantra-like principle:
“Secrets are Lies, Privacy is Theft, Sharing is Caring.”
Even in 1999, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy had put this
straightforwardly: “You have no privacy, get over it.” In the past, it was
E. Alloa (*) • D. Thomä

School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen,
St. Gallen, Switzerland
e-mail: emmanuel.alloa@unisg.ch; dieter.thomae@unisg.ch
© The Author(s) 2018 1

E. Alloa, D. Thomä (eds.), Transparency, Society and Subjectivity,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8_1
2 E. Alloa and D. Thomä
part of a certain Puritan ethos to live without curtains, signaling that

there was nothing to hide. Today, technology thrusts transparency upon
everybody. Resistance to this unauthorized and undesired transparency
remains rather marginal, and the reason may be that shedding full light
onto subjective conduct and behavior is believed to have a positive effect.
Being watched, so the belief goes, automatically leads to more moral
action, consistent with the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s
famous statement at the beginning of the twentieth century that “Sunlight
is said to be the best of disinfectants.” One hundred years later, there is a
growing consensus that transparency is one of democracy’s best tools and
that every citizen has a right to transparency. Demands for more trans-
parency are more widespread than ever, in fields as diverse as corporate
and public administration, finance, scientific research, sports, technol-
ogy, media, and healthcare. Transparency is not restricted to the social or
corporate spheres, however, but is also seen as an effective way to increase
accountability and responsibility on an individual level: acting under the
gaze of the public eye leads to more ethical behavior, or so we’re told. As
opposed to concepts like regulation or surveillance, transparency doesn’t
seem to have a negative counterpart that would counter its ambitions. In
a certain sense, thus, it could be said that the demands of transparency are
unlimited as it lacks a corrective or does not allow for any “Outside.”
Perhaps the ultimate consensual value of our time, transparency has
been invoked by Barack Obama and whistleblower Edward Snowden
alike, by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange but also by Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg. Yet nothing is less clear than what exactly is meant
when the word “transparency” is used. At a moment when institutions
start releasing transparency reports, including national intelligence agen-
cies, one might wonder if this is more than a merely rhetoric exercise:
releasing documents and figures alone can hardly count as a guarantee for
accountability, and besides, this overflow of data can even be seen as a
strategy of opacification. Quite often, transparency is only affected, simu-
lated, through deliberate practices of data-flooding (“drowning in disclo-
sure”) no average citizen can make sense of.
At times the power of “transparency” appears to lie in its mere utter-
ance, as if it were a magic formula whose meaning doesn’t need to be
understood for its effects to be felt. But what does “transparency” refer to?
The metaphoric level of the notion seems to strangely mirror its literal
meaning: the perfectly transparent window is one which completely
diverts the attention from itself. The less we see the windowpane, the
more we see through it. But having seeing-through be synonymous with
overlooking, makes it easy to understand why transparency—as an opera-
tive concept—rarely is an object of reflection in its own right.
Fortunately, these last years have seen the emergence of a yet small,
but rapidly growing field dedicated precisely to this kind of reflection:
Critical Transparency Studies. Unlike the now virtually infinite schol-
arly literature about transparency policies, which mainly studies how
transparency is implemented in public management, corporate busi-
nesses, and other national and transnational contexts, Critical
Transparency Studies start with questioning that transparency has a
stable semantic core. What they share is the sense that one must ask for
the reasons lying behind the sudden rise of this catchword. Their
approach to transparency also entails determining what transparency
stands for. Undeniably, to think through transparency means to think
through an opaque concept.
The book gathers some of the most prominent voices from this emerg-
ing field. By combining various approaches to the problem (philosophy,
intellectual history, political science, cultural theory, media studies, liter-
ary studies), the book offers a preliminary attempt at mapping the prob-
lem, interconnecting the various sites at which it went viral and connecting
the dots between past and present. The fact that no unified theory has
been put forward which would cover all these aspects mustn’t be to the
disadvantage of the overall project, rather the opposite. In order to better
understand this hegemonic term, it is appropriate to take a step back and
look at the field in all its diversity. This also entails seeing the current
obsession with transparency in a broader perspective of the history of
ideas. By linking this leading catchword in today’s hyper-mediated econ-
omies of information back to its historical roots, the book scrutinizes the
various reasons why it has become the new imperative of a supposedly
post-ideological age.
This book is organized in three sections: “Transparency in the Making,”
“Under the Crystal Dome” and “From the Panopticon to the Selfie and
Back.” The first section, “Transparency in the Making,” aims to investigate
the historical circumstances which allowed the concept of t ransparency to

emerge in Early Modernity and how it progressively came to occupy such
a central place in contemporary discourse.
In his introductory chapter “Transparency: A Magic Concept of
Modernity,” Emmanuel Alloa gives an overview of the emergent field of
Critical Transparency Studies, and traces some genealogical lines of
how, from the eighteenth century onwards, what was known in
Antiquity as an optical and aesthetic phenomenon—diaphaneity—was
transformed and came to stand for central concerns in self-knowledge,
morality and politics. It turns out that “transparency” incessantly wavers
between a factual requirement and a normative claim, an optical
impression and a metaphorical promise. The conceptual clarity trans-
parency heralds is inversely proportional to its factual semantic vague-
ness. Arguably, it is this very vagueness that allowed it to become a
magic concept, which promises to solve problems by the very fact of
being uttered. Against tendencies of seeing transparency as a means of
achieving self-coincidence, unicity and self-stability, the chapter recalls
alternative meanings of the term. When the artistic avant-gardes such
as Soviet Constructivism experimented with transparent materials and
layers, they were interested in the fact that in one single viewpoint,
objects that occupy different, mutually exclusive positions in space can
come to coexist and overlap. Seeing the overlaps between what is usu-
ally deemed to be apart makes way for a renewed understanding of
what coexistence means.
In his chapter “Seeing It All, Doing It All, Saying It All: Transparency,
Subject, and the World,” Dieter Thomä situates the debate on transpar-
ency in a larger context by comparing three epistemological or practical
attitudes of the subject towards the world: the ability of “seeing it all”
linked to the ideal of transparency, the courage of “saying it all” epito-
mized in “parrhesia” or free speech, and the power of “doing it all” labeled
as “panourgia” in Greek. By analyzing a vast array of sources reaching
from Sophocles and Euripides to Descartes, Diderot, and Bentham,
Thomä identifies the sharp differences between those three attitudes.
They represent competing ways of reading the subject and its outreach to
the world. The debate between Rousseau and Diderot is of particular
relevance: While Rousseau indulges in the dream of total self-transparency,
Diderot embraces roleplay as part and parcel of social existence:

Re-imagining one’s own presence and representing different personae
serve the purpose of exploring and pondering comprehensive, collective
self-images. Transparency loses some of its appeal in this context: As it
induces a turn from an active to a perceptive attitude, it tends to reduce
citizens to mere onlookers or observers.
In the next chapter of the section, Manfred Schneider argues that the
Western imaginary is haunted by a dream of transparency pervading the
philosophical, political and moral spheres alike. In “The Dream of
Transparency: Aquinas, Rousseau, Sartre,” Schneider turns to the first
occurrence of this dream in Greek and Latin literature. In the fabulous
anecdote of Momus told by Hesiod in his Theogony, Zeus is being blamed
for his failure of putting a door in man’s breast, through which you could
see their thoughts and control them. Schneider reconstructs the legacy of
the dream of transparency by turning to three pivotal authors from the
Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and the twentieth century: Saint
Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jean-Paul Sartre. In the last
part of his chapter, Schneider aims at disentangling the linguistic, politi-
cal and interpersonal aspects of transparency. He takes issue with the fact
that it leads to a curious conflation between the verbal and the visual.
In her contribution to the section—“Unbounded Confession”—
Noreen Khawaja explores the shifting status of religious confession in the
cultural imaginary of Protestantism. No longer considered a sacrament
by most reformers, the rite of confession was detached from its liturgical
context to take on an array of civic and political functions. Far from a
diminution of the importance of confession, Khawaja shows, the effect of
lifting confession’s sacramental status meant that one was “free” to make
confession at all times—in any company, at any place, under any circum-
stances. Through such shifts, confession became more than a particular
sort of speech act; it became a discursive form, a medium of communica-
tion in which the Christian citizen addressed not only God and her con-
science, but also the world. Appreciating the dynamic history of Protestant
confessional discourse allows to grasp the formation of confession as a
political and literary genre in Goethe, Rousseau and others, and allows us
to bring contemporary concerns about transparency into historical and
theological relief.
In “Seeing It All: Bentham’s Panopticon and the Dark Spots of

Enlightenment,” Miran Božovič returns to Bentham’s Panopticon
writings he has extensively worked on and draws a line between French
Enlightenment and subsequent utilitarianism. A yet underrated source
for reflections on transparency is Diderot’s anonymously published novel
Les Bijoux indiscrets (The Indiscreet Jewels). The novel depicts an African
empire in which purity of mores is established and maintained by the
unseen voice of female sex organs which is aware of all sexual transgres-
sions and impure thoughts of its bearer. As Božovič argues, Diderot’s
fantasy of a transparent empire is later realized by Jeremy Bentham in his
plans for the famous Panopticon prison. In the panoptic architecture,
Diderot’s multitude of unseen voices, each of which knows all actions
and thoughts of its bearer is replaced by a single never-seen voice which
knows everything about everyone, thus ensuring the smooth functioning
of the compact, transparent microcosm of the panopticon.
In the last contribution to this section, Stefanos Geroulanos turns to
the French critiques of transparency in the second half of twentieth cen-
tury which he has been dealing with extensively in the past. His text in
this volume “Transparency, Humanism, and the Politics of the Future
Before and After May ’68,” considers the effect of May ’68 on French
anti-transparency discourses and argues that a significant gap existed
between (1) principally epistemological critiques published shortly before
1968, and (2) the rise of a new set of political critiques of transparency in
the 1970s. The three years before May ’68 saw the publication of Leroi-
Gourhan’s Gesture and Speech, Foucault’s Order of Things, and Derrida’s
Of Grammatology, which all took for granted that no mind/world trans-
parency was available to the human subject. All three works signaled that
a certain transparency might be possible—even imminent—in the near
future, provided a certain humanism was jettisoned, and with it the
expectation that transparency would be achievable by humans them-
selves. May ’68 completely obviated this line of thinking.
The contributions to the second section, “Under the Crystal Dome,”
scrutinize the hopes (as well as the concerns) associated with a society
that would be ruled entirely by the principle of transparency and a state
of thorough permeability of social relationships.
In public discourse, transparency is widely considered a self-evident

good on the face of it, similar to privacy and free speech. In his chapter
on “The Limits of Transparency,” Amitai Etzioni re-examines the
theoretical assumptions underlying the claim that transparency can play
a major role in holding democratic governments accountable. His analy-
sis reveals that transparency plays a much smaller role than is often
assumed in sustaining democratic regimes. In addition, Etzioni indicates
that transparency cannot be relied upon to replace regulation, both
because it is, itself, a form of regulation and because of the way in which
democracies actually function. Etzioni argues that the ideological usages
of transparency are off the mark. A social science analysis shows that
transparency cannot fulfill the functions its advocates assign to it; at best
it can play a limited role in their service. When assessing transparency,
one must take into account a continuum composed of the order of disu-
tility and the level of information costs. The higher the score on both
variables, the less useful transparency is. Moreover, these scores need not
be particularly high to greatly limit the extent to which the public can
benefit from transparency.
The next chapter in the section starts where the previous one ends, and
looks back at the historical genesis of the discourse on transparency in
public affairs. As Sandrine Baume shows in “Publicity and Transparency:
The Itinerary of a Subtle Distinction,” these two terms are often used
interchangeably, as if transparency was just a synonym of the older term
publicity. The chapter investigates whether there is a discontinuity of
meaning between the principle of publicity, which appears in classical
writings, and the call for transparency emerging in parallel as a metaphor
in the eighteenth century. By putting together an inventory of both the
positive and negative associations of transparency stated by authors such
as Rousseau, Kant, Bentham and Constant, it can be shown that trans-
parency may be divided into six dimensions: legality, virtue, veracity,
responsibility/accountability, honor and control. Baume addresses the
reasons for distinguishing between the concepts of transparency and pub-
licity and builds on suggestions by Tero Erkkilä, Jon Elster, Erin Kelly,
and Daniel Naurin. After analyzing the contributions of these authors
and their limits, she suggests a different method of distinguishing
publicity from transparency by drawing on the polyvalence in the seman-

tics of the latter.
After discussing the relationship between transparency and publicity,
the second section moves on to the relationship between transparency
and regulation. In his chapter, “Regulation and Transparency as Rituals
of Distrust: Reading Niklas Luhmann against the Grain,” Caspar Hirschi
argues that such principles are presented by their advocates as procedural
measures to establish trust in public persons or institutions. Both trans-
parency and regulation claim to reduce the risk of individuals abusing the
system, and claim to be impersonal and dispassionate: this is what Niklas
Luhmann termed “legitimation through procedure.” Instead of believing
a decision to be valuable based on a personal assessment of its content, it
is considered legitimate by virtue of its immanent procedural standards,
regardless of content. As Caspar Hirschi claims, it would be more accu-
rate to describe them as political rituals, which actually do the contrary of
what they claim: they raise the level of distrust in public persons and
institutions. As a result, just as with regulation, transparency turns out to
be a distrust-generating ritual which exacerbates the problems it allegedly
solves.
The next chapter makes a point in claiming that transparency has very
little to do with critical publicity. According to Thomas Berns, the con-
temporary call for more transparency marks a very different paradigm.
The triviality of a government priding itself on adhering to reality by
making it transparent, is accompanied by the ideal of its own invisibility:
an efficient norm is one that does not even appear. The less a norm is
explicitly made public, the more transparent it will be. This see-through
invisibility is the key feature of the new kind of governmentality based on
algorithms. In his contribution, “Not Individuals, Relations: What
Transparency Is Really About,” Berns elaborates on his notion of algo-
rithmic transparency developed with Antoinette Rouvroy. The target of
algorithmic governmentality is not the individual subject, as this concept
has sometimes been misunderstood, but the relations between them. This
new approach of algorithmic governmentality and the specific ontology
it implements is based on Gilbert Simondon’s ontology of relations. But
with this nuance: algorithmic governmentality also leads to an individu-
alization of relations.
In his contribution, “Obfuscated Transparency,” Dieter Mersch reflects

on the transformation of transparency and opacity in the realm of digital
networks. Transparency requirements pose a challenge to well-established
conceptions of the “social” and the “political.” Mersch argues that
transparency is caught in an insufficiently acknowledged dialectic:

Complete transparency leads to obfuscation. Today, the designated
medium supposedly producing a maximum of transparency is the tech-
nological system of digital communication through networks, social plat-
forms and data exchanges. Digital transparency is far from being neutral
and generates a social and political sphere subject to its logic. What once
pertained to Enlightenment’s program of human emancipation boils
down to a mathematical form. Ultimately, noble ideas like digital equal-
ity or the democracy of seemingly free information flows come down to
formal choices based on a binary code. The ideal of a transparent society
based on justice and trust reveals itself to be nothing but an empty
surface.
In the last contribution to the section, Thomas Docherty ponders on
the role of transparency in imposing conformist mindsets. “The
Privatization of Human Interests or, How Transparency Breeds
Conformity” argues that in a specific version of “modernity,” deriving
from Arendt, transparency has become a mechanism through which we
eviscerate politics of content and substance, replacing it with the policing
of behaviors that constitute social conformity as a normative ideal. The
argument explores an account of modernity that situates public life (the
realm of politics) explicitly in relation to a private sphere (the realm of the
personal and of “selfhood”). Such modernity is dedicated to the task of
properly regulating the claims of the personal and of the political on
human identity. Docherty argues that modernity resolves this dialectical
tension by the privatization of ecology: the individual withdraws from
the political world in order to “cultiver son jardin” (as in Voltaire’s
Candide). Thus the private realm—and not politics—becomes the space
for distinctive human individuality, whereas the public sphere becomes
the place for social conformity. The demand for transparency is complicit
with the acceptance of a normative surveillance society, where “deviant”
behavior must be eradicated.
The third section, “From the Panopticon to the Selfie and Back,”
focuses on the connection between surveillance and subjectivation, from
Early Modern devices of imposed transparency to contemporary prac-
tices of voluntary self-exposure.
The section opens with Vincent Kaufmann’s chapter “Transparency
and Subjectivity: Remembering Jennifer Ringley.” Drawing upon media
studies as well as psychoanalysis, Kaufmann discusses the double mean-
ing of transparency applied to personality or subjectivity. On the one
hand, transparency refers to invisibility, to a lack of subjectivity or even
to psychosis: it’s the Orwellian Big Brother syndrome. On the other
hand, it refers to hypervisibility, to the exhibition of privacy, the horizon
of which is indeed exhibitionism and therefore perversion: the Jennicam
syndrome, named after the first lifecaster in the history of the Internet.
The two definitions of transparency seem to be contradictory, but they
aren’t. A twofold transparency is precisely what the contemporary media
environment forces us to live in, oscillating between psychotic invisibility
and perverse visibility, in which we have no choice but to swing con-
stantly between our submission to Big Brother—as described in Orwell’s
desubjectivized universe—and our desire to be part of Big Brother, one of
the first and most successful Reality TV shows. The latter appears as a
modern form of servitude volontaire. At the end, we might no longer
know if Jenni was rather psychotic or perverse.
Contemporary media culture forces us to rethink customary dichoto-
mies, so the authors of the next contribution state. According to Jörg
Metelmann and Thomas Telios, two interpretations that are both ver-
sions of the transparency dream, seek to come to grips with the recent
phenomenon of taking “selfies” of oneself: the first focuses on the process
of turning oneself inside out and on the longing for being looked at (nar-
cissism), the second sticks to the task of totally grasping oneself through
self-objectivization (quantified self ). In their text—“Putting Oneself Out
There: The “Selfie” and the Alter-Rithmic Transformations of
Subjectivity”—Metelmann and Telios argue that neither version fully
matches the “selfie” phenomenon. Instead, so they say, the “selfie” should
be seen as an exemplary device for a subjectivation process which already
thwarts the aim of full subjectification. The storage, serialization and dis-
semination of “selfies” points to a “selfing” project that already takes place
“out there,” under conditions of sociality and sharedness. In this respect,

the “selfie” is neither a diminished version of the “I” nor an idealized
type, neither merely self-referential nor merely self-quantificational, but
a device of an ongoing “selfing” process, which opacifies a given identity
all the while it pretends making it transparent.
In “Interrupting Transparency,” Clare Birchall asks how we need to
rethink transparency issues since Donald Trump’s election. Certain
aspects of Trump’s presidential campaign and the early days of his
administration challenged a binary visual code that pits opacity against
openness, as well as a teleological narrative that establishes transpar-
ency as the logical incarnation of Enlightenment ideals and an admin-
istrative norm today. Because of the ideological nature of contemporary
transparency tools, an interruption of technocratic transparency in its
data-driven form might not in all circumstances be a regressive move.
While recognizing the risks inherent in a displacement of technocratic
transparency by a figure like Trump, Birchall explores the possibility of
utilizing the unsettled conditions of visibility, in which openness and
obfuscation merge, to recalibrate and radicalize the politics of trans-
parency. Birchall then makes a plea for “radical transparency” which
indicates not more (of the same) transparency, whether moralistic pop-
ulist transparency or technocratic data driven transparency, but a
transparency robust enough to contend with “post-truth” figures, strat-
egies, and politics.
In a previous book, Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age
(2015), Bernard Harcourt explored our new digital age and its many
seductions—the ways in which our own desires to take selfies, post
Snapchats, and stream NetFlix unwittingly feed the surveillance machin-
ery of the NSA, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, and so
on. Harcourt argued there that we had entered an “expository society”
where we increasingly exhibit ourselves online, and in the process freely
give away our most personal and private data. No longer an Orwellian or
a panoptic society, ours is now fueled by our own proclivities, joy, and
narcissism—posting on Facebook, searching on Google, buying on
Amazon, Instagramming selfies. While this remains true, the relation of
our new digital exposure to the more violent practices associated with the
war on terrorism—to drone strikes and other new digital technologies of

warfare—requires more detailed attention. Beyond the original diagnosis
in Exposed, our expository society must be understood within the larger
framework of a new security apparatus, Harcourt states in “Virtual
Transparency: From the Panopticon to the Expository Society and
Beyond.” By starting off again in 1973, when Michel Foucault delivered
his Lecture Series on the Punitive Society, the chapter attempts at spelling
that out in a detailed engagement with new techniques of surveillance
and warfare.
As the title of this book epitomizes, the aim is to explore how two
domains which have often been discussed separately (the ideal of a trans-
parent self and the ideal of a transparent society) actually yield to analo-
gous logics. Epistemic and moral discourses about self-transparency and
those about the transparency of procedures in social life might have much
more in common than just the sharing of a metaphor. In modernity, so
the hypothesis, psychogenesis and sociogenesis are intimately inter-
twined, and analyzing the mutual correspondences is instrumental for
understanding the normative transformations put forward in modern
and late modern discourses about society and subjectivity.
As an ouverture to the volume, we republish an article that the late
Umberto Eco wrote in the immediate aftermath of the Wikileaks revela-
tions. In “Not such Wicked Leaks,” Umberto Eco argues that the
Wikileaks or Cablegate affair not only shows up the hypocrisy that gov-
erns relations between states, citizens and the press, but also presages a
“crabwise” return to more archaic forms of communication. When skim-
ming through the leaked secret diplomatic cables, the world discovered
that their content mainly contained knowledge about facts already widely
available in daily news. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, in an age where
embassies ask the press for an inside story. The real issue, however, is
another one, Eco argues. As Georg Simmel once remarked, a real secret is
an empty secret, since this is the only condition for making sure that it
can’t be eventually unearthed. The content of diplomacy itself is an open
secret, protected only by hypocrisy. But to actually reveal, as WikiLeaks
has done, that politician’s secrets were empty secrets amounts to taking
away their power. This even holds true for modern governments, which—
unlike those of the Ancien Régime that quite openly staged their arcana
imperii—have a tendency to make a secret of their own dependence on

secrets.
In an age of digital transparency, hypocrisy faces an uncertain future.
On the other hand, the newly induced transparency is not merely
imposed by disciplinary surveillance technologies, but also actively engi-
neered by the subjects themselves. All netizens take part, whether they
like it or not, in the huge data assemblage about themselves which will
then orient their own future behavior and options. But often this self-
transparency is something willfully looked for, through ever-greater
forms of self-exposure in the social media. We must interrogate the rea-
sons which led to a situation where what is felt as punishment is no
longer being watched by others, but in the absence thereof. The ways in
which society thinks about itself and subjects conceive of their existence
is currently undergoing decisive changes, which need to be described and
conceptualized, not least for elaborating strategies of resistance to this
self-induced servitude.
Not such Wicked Leaks
Umberto Eco
The WikiLeaks affair has a twofold value. On the one hand, it turns out
to be a bogus scandal, a scandal that only appears to be a scandal against
the backdrop of the hypocrisy governing relations between the state, the
citizenry and the press. On the other hand, it heralds a sea change in
international communication—and prefigures a regressive future of
“crabwise” progress.
But let’s take it one step at a time. First off, the WikiLeaks confirm the
fact that every file put together by a secret service (of any nation you like)
is exclusively made up of press clippings. The “extraordinary” American
revelations about Berlusconi’s sex habits merely relay what could already
be read for months in any newspaper (except those owned by Berlusconi
himself, needless to say), and the sinister caricature of Gaddafi has long
been the stuff of cabaret farce.
U. Eco (*)
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: emmanuel.alloa@unisg.ch

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8_2
16 U. Eco
mbassies Have Morphed into Espionage

E
Centers
The rule that says secret files must only contain news that is already com-
mon knowledge is essential to the dynamic of secret services, and not
only in the present century. Go to an esoteric book shop and you’ll find
that every book on the shelf (on the Holy Grail, the “mystery” of Rennes-
le-Château [a hoax theory concocted to draw tourists to a French town],
on the Templars or the Rosicrucians) is a point-by-point rehash of what
is already written in older books. And it’s not just because occult authors
are averse to doing original research (or don’t know where to look for
news about the non-existent), but because those given to the occult only
believe what they already know and what corroborates what they’ve
already heard. That happens to be Dan Brown’s success formula.
The same goes for secret files. The informant is lazy. So is the head of
the secret service (or at least he’s limited—otherwise he could be, what do
I know, an editor at Libération): he only regards as true what he recog-
nizes. The top-secret dope on Berlusconi that the US embassy in Rome
beamed to the Department of State was the same story that had come out
in Newsweek the week before.
So why so much ado about these leaks? For one thing, they say what
any savvy observer already knows: that the embassies, at least since the
end of World War II, and since heads of state can call each other up or fly
over to meet for dinner, have lost their diplomatic function and, but for
the occasional ceremonial function, have morphed into espionage cen-
ters. Anyone who watches investigative documentaries knows that full
well, and it is only out of hypocrisy that we feign ignorance. Still, repeat-
ing that in public constitutes a breach of the duty of hypocrisy, and puts
American diplomacy in a lousy light.
A Real Secret Is an Empty Secret

Secondly, the very notion that any old hacker can delve into the most
secret secrets of the most powerful country in the world has dealt a hefty
blow to the State Department’s prestige. So the scandal actually hurts the
“perpetrators” more than the “victims.”
Not such Wicked Leaks 17
But let’s turn to the more profound significance of what has occurred.
Formerly, back in the days of Orwell, every power could be conceived
of as a Big Brother watching over its subjects’ every move. The Orwellian
prophecy came completely true once the powers that be could monitor
every phone call made by the citizen, every hotel he stayed in, every toll
road he took and so on and so forth. The citizen became the total vic-
tim of the watchful eye of the state. But when it transpires, as it has
now, that even the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s
grasp, the surveillance ceases to work only one-way and becomes circu-
lar. The state has its eye on every citizen, but every citizen, or at least
every hacker—the citizens’ self-appointed avenger—can pry into the
state’s every secret.
How can a power hold up if it can’t even keep its own secrets anymore?
It is true, as Georg Simmel once remarked, that a real secret is an empty
secret (which can never be unearthed); it is also true that anything known
about Berlusconi or Merkel’s character is essentially an empty secret, a
secret without a secret, because it is public domain. But to actually reveal,
as WikiLeaks has done, that Hillary Clinton’s secrets were empty secrets
amounts to taking away all her power. WikiLeaks didn’t do any harm to
Sarkozy or Merkel, but did irreparable damage to Clinton and Obama.
Technology Now Advances Crabwise

What will be the consequences of this wound inflicted on a very mighty
power? It’s obvious that in future, states won’t be able to put any restricted
information online anymore: that would be tantamount to posting it on
a street corner. But it is equally clear that, given today’s technologies, it is
pointless to hope to have confidential dealings over the phone. Nothing
is easier than finding out whether a head of state flew in or out or
contacted one of his counterparts. So how can privy matters be con-
ducted in future? Now I know that for the time being, my forecast is still
science fiction and therefore fantastic, but I can’t help imagining state
agents riding discreetly in stagecoaches along untrackable routes, bearing
only memorized messages or, at most, the occasional document concealed
in the heel of a shoe. Only a single copy thereof will be kept—in locked
18 U. Eco
drawers. Ultimately, the attempted Watergate break-in was less successful

than WikiLeaks.
I once had occasion to observe that technology now advances crab-
wise, that is, backwards. A century after the wireless telegraph revolution-
ized communications, the Internet has re-established a telegraph that
runs on (telephone) wires. (Analog) video cassettes enabled film buffs to
peruse a movie frame by frame, by fast-forwarding and rewinding to lay
bare all the secrets of the editing process, but (digital) CDs now only
allow us quantum leaps from one chapter to another. High-speed trains
take us from Rome to Milan in three hours, but flying there, if you
include transfers to and from the airports, takes three and a half hours. So
it wouldn’t be extraordinary if politics and communications technologies
were to revert to the horse-drawn carriage.
One last observation: In days of yore, the press would try to figure out
what was hatching sub rosa inside the embassies. Nowadays, it’s the
embassies that are asking the press for the inside story.
Translated by Eric Rosencrantz/VoxEurop
Part I
Transparency in the Making
Transparency: A Magic Concept
of Modernity
Emmanuel Alloa
A New TransparentoCene?
The aim of phrasing the latest and definite concept for describing our age
has led observers to engage in a race with inflationary outbidding. Among
the boldest proposals made, the following deserves special mention. In
March 2015, the Scientific American published an article titled “Our
Transparent Future.” In the article, neurophilosopher Daniel C. Dennett
and Deb Roy, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) Laboratory for Social Machines, argue that we are currently wit-
nessing a “transparency explosion” (Dennett and Roy 2015). This explo-
sion, Dennett and Roy suggest, should be understood in its true
implications, which means considering it on the scale of geological eons.
As it were, transparency would not so much amount to a societal demand
currently voiced in public and corporate contexts as to a major threshold
in the development of collective life-forms, and as such, the authors
E. Alloa (*)
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen,
St. Gallen, Switzerland
e-mail: emmanuel.alloa@unisg.ch

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8_3
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
to make an entire change in the scheme of sugar duties, which
would give the Trust a fifth of a cent per pound of protective
differential, instead of an eighth; but the House resisted,
with more success than in 1894, and the senatorial friends of
the Sugar Trust had to give way.
See, also (in this volume),

TRUSTS: UNITED STATES;
and SUGAR BOUNTIES.
"The tariff act of 1894 had repealed the provisions as to

reciprocity in the act of 1890, and had rendered nugatory such
parts of the treaties made under the earlier act as were
inconsistent with the provisions of its successor. The act of
1897 now revived the policy of reciprocity, and in some ways
even endeavored to enlarge the scope of the reciprocity
provisions"
See below: A. D. 1899-1901.
F. W. Taussig,
Tariff History of the United States,
4th edition, chapter 7 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons).
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (April-October).

Negotiations for an international bi-metallic agreement.
See (in this volume)

MONETARY QUESTIONS: A. D 1897 (APRIL-OCTOBER).
{583}
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (June).

Appointment of the Nicaragua Canal Commission.

CANAL, INTEROCEANIC: A. D. 1889-1899.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (November).
Refusal to negotiate with the insurgent republic of the
Philippine Islands.
On the 3d of November, 1897, Mr. Rounseville Wildman, the U.

S. Consul at Hongkong, addressed the following to the State
Department: "Since my arrival in Hongkong I have been called
upon several times by Mr. F. Agoncilla, foreign agent and high
commissioner, etc., of the new republic of the Philippines.
Mr. Agoncilla holds a commission, signed by the president,
members of cabinet, and general in chief of the republic of
Philippines, empowering him absolutely with power to conclude
treaties with foreign governments. Mr. Agoncilla offers on
behalf of his government alliance offensive and defensive with
the United States when the United States declares war on
Spain, which, in Mr. Agoncilla's judgment, will be very soon.
In the meantime he wishes the United States to send to some
port in the Philippines 20,000 stand of arms and 200,000
rounds of ammunition for the use of his government, to be paid
for on the recognition of his government by the United States.
He pledges as security two provinces and the custom-house at
Manila. He is not particular about the price—is willing the
United States should make 25 per cent or 30 per cent profit.
He is a very earnest and attentive diplomat and a great
admirer of the United States. On his last visit he surprised
me with the information that he had written his government
that he had hopes of inducing the United States to supply the
much-needed guns, etc. In case Señor Agoncilla's dispatch
should fall into the hands of an unfriendly power and find its
way into the newspapers, I have thought it wise to apprise the
State Department of the nature of the high commissioner's
proposals. Señor Agoncilla informs me by late mail that he
will proceed at once to Washington to conclude the proposed
treaty, if I advise. I shall not advise said step until so
instructed by the State Department."
To this communication, the Third Assistant Secretary of State,
Mr. Cridler, returned the following reply, December 15, 1897:
"I have to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch Number 19

of November 3, 1897, in which you announce the arrival at your
post of Mr. F. Agoncilla, whom you describe as foreign agent
and high commissioner of the new republic of the Philippines,
and who holds full power to negotiate and conclude treaties
with foreign powers. Mr. Agoncilla offers an alliance
'offensive and defensive with the United States when the
United States declares war on Spain, which, in Mr. Agoncilla's
judgment, will be very soon,' and suggests that 20,000 stand
of arms and 200,000 rounds of ammunition be supplied to his
government by that of the United States. You may briefly
advise Mr. Agoncilla, in case he should call upon you, that
the Government of the United States does not negotiate such
treaties and that it is not possible to forward the desired
arms and ammunition. You should not encourage any advances on
the part of Mr. Agoncilla, and should courteously decline to
communicate with the Department further regarding his alleged
mission."
Treaty of Peace and Accompanying Papers

(55th Congress, 3d Session, Senate Document
Number 62, part 1, pages 333,334).
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (November).

Treaty with Russia and Japan to suspend pelagic sealing.

BERING SEA QUESTIONS.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (December).

President McKinley on Cuban affairs.

CUBA: A. D. 1896-1897.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (December).
Stringent measures against pelagic sealing.

BERING SEA QUESTIONS.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897-1898 (December-March).

Reports from Cuba of the suffering condition of
the "reconcentrados."

CUBA: A. D. 1897-1898 (DECEMBER-MARCH).
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897-1899.

Agreements with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee,
and Seminole tribes of Indians.
Work of the Dawes Commission.

INDIANS, AMERICAN: A. D. 1893-1899.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897-1900.

Treaty for the annexation of Hawaii.
Its failure of ratification.
Passage of joint resolution to annex, and of an Act
for the government of the islands.

HAWAII.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (February-March).

American sympathy with the Cubans and indignation
against Spain.
Destruction of the United States battle-ship "Maine"
in Havana harbor.
Investigation and findings of the American and
Spanish courts of inquiry.
Public feeling in the United States, excited by a terrible

state of suffering in Cuba, resulting from Spanish methods of
dealing with insurrection in that island, had been gathering
intensity for months past, and threatening a rupture of
peaceful relations between the United States and Spain.
See (in this volume),

CUBA: A. D. 1896-1897 and 1897-1898)
A sudden crisis in the situation was produced, on the morning

of the 15th of February, 1898, by news that the United States
battle-ship "Maine," while paying a visit of courtesy to the
harbor of Havana, had been totally destroyed, on the previous
evening, by an explosion which killed most of her crew. In a
subsequent message on the subject to Congress, President
McKinley recited the circumstances of the catastrophe, and the
proceedings adopted to ascertain its cause, with the
conclusions reached, in the following words: "For some time
prior to the visit of the 'Maine' to Havana Harbor our
consular representatives pointed out the advantages to flow
from the visit of national ships to the Cuban waters, in
accustoming the people to the presence of our flag as the
symbol of good will and of our ships in the fulfillment of the
mission of protection to American interests, even though no
immediate need therefor might exist. Accordingly on the 24th
of January last, after conference with the Spanish minister;
in which the renewal of visits of our war vessels to Spanish
waters was discussed and accepted, the peninsular authorities
at Madrid and Havana were advised of the purpose of this
Government to resume friendly naval visits at Cuban ports, and
that in that view the 'Maine' would forthwith call at the port
of Havana. This announcement was received by the Spanish
Government with appreciation of the friendly character of the
visit of the 'Maine,' and with notification of intention to
return the courtesy by sending Spanish ships to the principal
ports of the United States. Meanwhile the 'Maine' entered the
port of Havana on the 25th of January, her arrival being
marked with no special incident besides the exchange of
customary salutes and ceremonial visits.
{584}
"The 'Maine' continued in the harbor of Havana during the

three weeks following her arrival. No appreciable excitement
attended her stay; on the contrary, a feeling of relief and
confidence followed the resumption of the long-interrupted
friendly intercourse. So noticeable was this immediate effect
of her visit that the consul-general strongly urged that the
presence of our ships in Cuban waters should be kept up by
retaining the 'Maine' at Havana, or, in the event of her
recall, by sending another vessel there to take her place. At
forty minutes past 9 in the evening of the 15th of February
the 'Maine' was destroyed by an explosion, by which the entire
forward part of the ship was utterly wrecked. In this
catastrophe 2 officers and 264 of her crew perished, those who
were not killed outright by her explosion being penned between
decks by the tangle of wreckage and drowned by the immediate
sinking of the hull. Prompt assistance was rendered by the
neighboring vessels anchored in the harbor, aid being
especially given by the boats of the Spanish cruiser 'Alfonso
XII' and the Ward Line steamer 'City of Washington,' which lay
not far distant. The wounded were generously cared for by the
authorities of Havana, the hospitals being freely opened to
them, while the earliest recovered bodies of the dead were
interred by the municipality in a public cemetery in the city.
Tributes of grief and sympathy were offered from all official
quarters of the island.
"The appalling calamity fell upon the people of our country

with crushing force, and for a brief time an intense
excitement prevailed, which in a community less just and
self-controlled than ours might have led to hasty acts of
blind resentment. This spirit, however, soon gave way to the
calmer processes of reason and to the resolve to investigate
the facts and await material proof before forming a judgment
as to the cause, the responsibility, and, if the facts
warranted, the remedy due. This course necessarily recommended
itself from the outset to the Executive, for only in the light
of a dispassionately ascertained certainty could it determine
the nature and measure of its full duty in the matter. The
usual procedure was followed, as in all cases of casualty or
disaster to national vessels of any maritime State. A naval
court of inquiry was at once organized, composed of officers
well qualified by rank and practical experience to discharge
the onerous duty imposed upon them. Aided by a strong force of
wreckers and divers, the court proceeded to make a thorough
investigation on the spot, employing every available means for
the impartial and exact determination of the causes of the
explosion. Its operations have been conducted with the utmost
deliberation and judgment, and while independently pursued no
attainable source of information was neglected, and the
fullest opportunity was allowed for a simultaneous
investigation by the Spanish authorities. The finding of the
court of inquiry was reached, after twenty-three days of
continuous labor, on the 21st of March, instant, and, having
been approved on the 22d by the commander in chief of the
United States naval force on the North Atlantic Station, was
transmitted to the Executive. It is herewith laid before the
Congress, together with the voluminous testimony taken before
the court. Its purport is, in brief, as follows:
"When the 'Maine' arrived at Havana she was conducted by the

regular Government pilot to buoy Number 4, to which she was
moored in from 5½ to 6 fathoms of water. The state of
discipline on board and the condition of her magazines,
boilers, coal bunkers, and storage compartments are passed in
review, with the conclusion that excellent order prevailed and
that no indication of any cause for an internal explosion
existed in any quarter. At 8 o'clock in the evening of
February 15 everything had been reported secure, and all was
quiet. At forty minutes past 9 o'clock the vessel was suddenly
destroyed. There were two distinct explosions, with a brief
interval between them. The first lifted the forward part of
the ship very perceptibly. The second, which was more open,
prolonged, and of greater volume, is attributed by the court
to the partial explosion of two or more of the forward
magazines. The evidence of the divers establishes that the
after part of the ship was practically intact and sank in that
condition a very few moments after the explosion. The forward
part was completely demolished. Upon the evidence of a
concurrent external cause the finding of the court is as
follows:
"'At frame 17 the outer shell of the ship, from a point of 11½
feet from the middle line of the ship and 6 feet above the
keel when in its normal position, has been forced up so as to
be now about 4 feet above the surface of the water, therefore
about 34 feet above where it would be had the ship sunk
uninjured. The outside bottom plating is bent into a reversed
V shape (˄), the after wing of which, about 15 feet broad and
32 feet in length (from frame 17 to frame 25), is doubled back
upon itself against the continuation of the same plating,
extending forward. At frame 18 the vertical keel is broken
in two and the flat keel bent into an angle similar to the
angle formed by the outside bottom plates. This break is now
about 6 feet below the surface of the water and about 30 feet
above its normal position. In the opinion of the court this
effect could have been produced only by the explosion of a
mine situated under the bottom of the ship at about frame 18
and somewhat on the port side of the ship.'
"The conclusions of the court are: That the loss of the

'Maine' was not in any respect due to fault or negligence on
the part of any of the officers or members of her crew; That
the ship was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine,
which caused the partial explosion of two or more of her
forward magazines; and That no evidence has been obtainable
fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the 'Maine'
upon any person or persons.
"I have directed that the finding of the court of inquiry and
the views of this Government thereon be communicated to the
Government of Her Majesty the Queen Regent, and I do not
permit myself to doubt that the sense of justice of the
Spanish nation will dictate a course of action suggested by
honor and the friendly relations of the two Governments. It
will be the duty of the Executive to advise the Congress of
the result, and in the meantime deliberate consideration is
invoked."
Congressional Record, March 28, 1898.
{585}
A Spanish naval board of inquiry, convened by the maritime

authority at Havana, and investigating the matter with haste,
arrived at a conclusion quite opposite to that stated above,
reporting on the 22d of March that "an explosion of the first
order, in the forward magazine of the American ironclad
'Maine,' caused the destruction of that part of the ship and
its total submersion in the same place in this bay at which it
was anchored. … That the important facts connected with the
explosion in its external appearances at every moment of its
duration having been described by witnesses, and the absence
of all circumstances which necessarily accompany the explosion
of a torpedo having been proved by these witnesses and
experts, it can only be honestly asserted that the catastrophe
was due to internal causes. … That the character of the
proceedings undertaken and respect for the law which
establishes the absolute extra-territoriality of a foreign war
vessel have prevented the determination, even by conjecture,
of the said internal origin of the disaster, to which also the
impossibility of establishing the necessary communication
either with the crew of the wrecked vessel or the officials of
their Government commissioned to investigate the causes of the
said event, or with those subsequently intrusted with the
issue, has contributed. … That the interior and exterior
examination of the bottom of the 'Maine,' whenever it is
possible, unless the bottom of the ship and that of the place
in the bay where it is sunk are altered by the work which is
being carried on for the total or partial recovery of the
vessel, will prove the correctness of all that is said in this
report; but this must not be understood to mean that the
accuracy of these present conclusions requires such proof."
U. S. Senate Report Number 885,

55th Congress, 2d Session, page 635.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (February-December).

In the Chinese "battle of concessions."

CHINA: A. D. 1898 (FEBRUARY-DECEMBER).
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (March).

Account by Senator Proctor of the condition of
the "reconcentrados" in Cuba.

CUBA: A. D. 1897-1898 (DECEMBER-MARCH).
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (March-April).

Continued discussion of Cuban affairs with Spain.
Unsatisfactory results.
Message of the President asking Congress for authority
to terminate hostilities in Cuba.
On the 11th of April, President McKinley addressed another

special message to Congress, setting forth the unsatisfactory
results with which Cuban affairs had been further discussed
with the government of Spain, and formally asking to be
authorized and empowered to take measures for securing a "full
and final termination of hostilities" in the oppressed island.
He said:
"Obedient to that precept of the Constitution which commands

the President to give from time to time to the Congress
information of the state of the Union and to recommend to
their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary
and expedient, it becomes my duty now to address your body
with regard to the grave crisis that has arisen in the
relations of the United States to Spain by reason of the
warfare that for more than three years has raged in the
neighboring island of Cuba. I do so because of the intimate
connection of the Cuban question with the state of our own
Union, and the grave relation the course which it is now
incumbent upon the nation to adopt must needs bear to the
traditional policy of our Government, if it is to accord with
the precepts laid down by the founders of the Republic and
religiously observed by succeeding Administrations to the
present day.
"The present revolution is but the successor of other similar

insurrections which have occurred in Cuba against the dominion
of Spain, extending over a period of nearly half a century,
each of which, during its progress, has subjected the United
States to great effort and expense in enforcing its neutrality
laws, caused enormous losses to American trade and commerce,
caused irritation, annoyance, and disturbance among our
citizens, and, by the exercise of cruel, barbarous, and
uncivilized practices of warfare, shocked the sensibilities
and offended the humane sympathies of our people. Since the
present revolution began, in February, 1895, this country has
seen the fertile domain at our threshold ravaged by fire and
sword in the course of a struggle unequaled in the history of
the island and rarely paralleled as to the numbers of the
combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolution
of modern times where a dependent people striving to be free
have been opposed by the power of the sovereign state. Our
people have beheld a once prosperous community reduced to
comparative want, its lucrative commerce virtually paralyzed,
its exceptional productiveness diminished, its fields laid
waste, its mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of
thousands from hunger and destitution. We have found ourselves
constrained, in the observance of that strict neutrality which
our laws enjoin and which the law of nations commands, to
police our own waters and to watch our own seaports in
prevention of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans. Our trade
has suffered; the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba has
been largely lost, and the temper and forbearance of our
people have been so sorely tried as to beget a perilous unrest
among our own citizens which has inevitably found its
expression from time to time in the National Legislature, so
that issues wholly external to our own body politic engross
attention and stand in the way of that close devotion to
domestic advancement that becomes a self-contained
commonwealth whose primal maxim has been the avoidance of all
foreign entanglements. All this must needs awaken, and has,
indeed, aroused the utmost concern on the part of this
Government, as well during my predecessor's term as in my own.
"In April, 1896, the evils from which our country suffered
through the Cuban war became so onerous that my predecessor
made an effort to bring about a peace through the mediation of
this Government in any way that might tend to an honorable
adjustment of the contest between Spain and her revolted
colony, on the basis of some effective scheme of
self-government for Cuba under the flag and sovereignty of
Spain. It failed through the refusal of the Spanish Government
then in power to consider any form of mediation or, indeed, any
plan of settlement which did not begin with the actual
submission of the insurgents to the mother country, and then
only on such terms as Spain herself might see fit to grant.
The war continued unabated. The resistance of the insurgents
was in no wise diminished. The efforts of Spain were
increased, both by the dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by
the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman
phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized
Christian peoples.
{586}
The policy of devastation and concentration, inaugurated by
the captain-general's bando of October 21, 1896, in the
province of Pinar del Rio, was thence extended to embrace all
of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able
to reach by occupation or by military operations. The
peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricultural
interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated
places held by the troops. The raising and movement of
provisions of all kinds were interdicted. The fields were laid
waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, and, in
short, everything that could desolate the land and render it
unfit for human habitation or support was commanded by one or
the other of the contending parties and executed by all the
powers at their disposal.
"By the time the present Administration took office, a year

ago, reconcentration—so called—had been made effective over
the better part of the four central and western
provinces—Santa Clara, Matanzas, Habana, and Pinar del Rio.
The agricultural population to the estimated number of 300,000
or more was herded within the towns and their immediate
vicinage, deprived of the means of support, rendered destitute
of shelter, left poorly clad, and exposed to the most
unsanitary conditions. As the scarcity of food increased with
the devastation of the depopulated areas of production,
destitution and want became misery and starvation. Month by
month the death rate increased in an alarming ratio. By March,
1897, according to conservative estimates from official
Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados, from
starvation and the diseases thereto incident, exceeded 50 per
centum of their total number. No practical relief was accorded
to the destitute. The overburdened towns, already suffering
from the general dearth, could give no aid. So-called 'zones
of cultivation' established within the immediate areas of
effective military control about the cities and fortified
camps proved illusory as a remedy for the suffering. The
unfortunates, being for the most part women and children, with
aged and helpless men, enfeebled by disease and hunger, could
not have tilled the soil without tools, seed, or shelter for
their own support or for the supply of the cities.
Reconcentration, adopted avowedly as a war measure in order to
cut off the resources of the insurgents, worked its
predestined result. As I said in my message of last December,
it was not civilized warfare; it was extermination. The only
peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave.
"Meanwhile the military situation in the island had undergone

a noticeable change. The extraordinary activity that
characterized the second year of the war, when the insurgents
invaded even the thitherto unharmed fields of Pinar del Rio
and carried havoc and destruction up to the walls of the city
of Habana itself, had relapsed into a dogged struggle in the
central and eastern provinces. The Spanish arms regained a
measure of control in Pinar del Rio and parts of Habana, but,
under the existing conditions of the rural country, without
immediate improvement of their productive situation. Even thus
partially restricted, the revolutionists held their own, and
their conquest and submission, put forward by Spain as the
essential and sole basis of peace, seemed as far distant as at
the outset. In this state of affairs my Administration found
itself confronted with the grave problem of its duty. My
message of last December reviewed the situation, and narrated
the steps taken with a view to relieving its acuteness and
opening the way to some form of honorable settlement. The
assassination of the prime minister, Canovas, led to a change
of government in Spain. The former administration, pledged to
subjugation without concession, gave place to that of a more
liberal party, committed long in advance to a policy of reform
involving the wider principle of home rule for Cuba and Porto
Rico.
"The overtures of this Government, made through its new envoy,

General Woodford, and looking to an immediate and effective
amelioration of the condition of the island, although not
accepted to the extent of admitted mediation in any shape,
were met by assurances that home rule, in an advanced phase,
would be forthwith offered to Cuba, without waiting for the
war to end, and that more humane methods should thenceforth
prevail in the conduct of hostilities. Coincidentally with
these declarations, the new Government of Spain continued and
completed the policy already begun by its predecessor, of
testifying friendly regard for this nation by releasing
American citizens held under one charge or another connected
with the insurrection, so that by the end of November not a
single person entitled in any way to our national protection
remained in a Spanish prison.
"While these negotiations were in progress the increasing

destitution of the unfortunate reconcentrados and the alarming
mortality among them claimed earnest attention. The success
which had attended the limited measure of relief extended to
the suffering American citizens among them by the judicious
expenditure through the consular agencies of the money
appropriated expressly for their succor by the joint
resolution approved May 24, 1897, prompted the humane
extension of a similar scheme of aid to the great body of
sufferers. A suggestion to this end was acquiesced in by the
Spanish authorities. On the 24th of December last I caused to
be issued an appeal to the American people, inviting
contributions in money or in kind for the succor of the
starving sufferers in Cuba, following this on the 8th of
January by a similar public announcement of the formation of a
central Cuban relief committee, with headquarters in New York
City, composed of three members, representing the American
National Red Cross and the religious and business elements of
the community. The efforts of that committee have been
untiring and have accomplished much. Arrangements for free
transportation to Cuba have greatly aided the charitable work.
The president of the American Red Cross and representatives of
other contributory organizations have generously visited Cuba
and cooperated with the consul-general and the local
authorities to make effective distribution of the relief
collected through the efforts of the central committee. Nearly
$200,000 in money and supplies has already reached the
sufferers, and more is forthcoming. The supplies are admitted
duty free, and transportation to the interior has been
arranged, so that the relief, at first necessarily confined to
Habana and the larger cities, is now extended through most, if
not all, of the towns where suffering exists.
{587}
Thousands of lives have already been saved. The necessity for
a change in the condition of the reconcentrados is recognized
by the Spanish Government. Within a few days past the orders
of General Weyler have been revoked; the reconcentrados, it is
said, are to be permitted to return to their homes, and aided
to resume the self-supporting pursuits of peace. Public works
have been ordered to give them employment, and a sum of
$600,000 has been appropriated for their relief.
"The war in Cuba is of such a nature that short of subjugation

or extermination a final military victory for either side
seems impracticable. The alternative lies in the physical
exhaustion of the one or the other party, or perhaps of both—a
condition which in effect ended the ten years' war by the truce
of Zanjon. The prospect of such a protraction and conclusion
of the present strife is a contingency hardly to be
contemplated with equanimity by the civilized world, and least
of all by the United States, affected and injured as we are,
deeply and intimately, by its very existence. Realizing this,
it appeared to be my duty, in a spirit of true friendliness,
no less to Spain than to the Cubans who have so much to lose
by the prolongation of the struggle, to seek to bring about an
immediate termination of the war. To this end I submitted on
the 27th ultimo, as a result of much representation and
correspondence, through the United States minister at Madrid,
propositions to the Spanish Government looking to an armistice
until October 1 for the negotiation of peace with the good
offices of the President. In addition, I asked the immediate
revocation of the order of reconcentration, so as to permit
the people to return to their farms and the needy to be
relieved with provisions and supplies from the United States,
cooperating with the Spanish authorities, so as to afford full
relief.
"The reply of the Spanish cabinet was received on the night of

the 31st ultimo. It offered, as the means to bring about peace
in Cuba, to confide the preparation thereof to the insular
parliament, inasmuch as the concurrence of that body would be
necessary to reach a final result, it being, however,
understood that the powers reserved by the constitution to the
Central Government are not lessened or diminished. As the
Cuban parliament does not meet until the 4th of May next, the
Spanish Government would not object, for its part, to accept
at once a suspension of hostilities if asked for by the
insurgents from the general in chief, to whom it would
pertain, in such case, to determine the duration and
conditions of the armistice. The propositions submitted by
General Woodford and the reply of the Spanish Government were
both in the form of brief memoranda, the texts of which are
before me, and are substantially in the language above given.
The function of the Cuban parliament in the matter of
'preparing' peace and the manner of its doing so are not
expressed in the Spanish memorandum; but from General
Woodford's explanatory reports of preliminary discussions
preceding the final conference it is understood that the
Spanish Government stands ready to give the insular congress
full powers to settle the terms of peace with the
insurgents—whether by direct negotiation or indirectly by
means of legislation does not appear.
"With this last overture in the direction of immediate peace,
and its disappointing reception by Spain, the Executive is
brought to the end of his effort. In my annual message of
December last I said: 'Of the untried measures there remain
only: Recognition of the insurgents as belligerents;
recognition of the independence of Cuba; neutral intervention
to end the war by imposing a rational compromise between the
contestants, and intervention in favor of one or the other
party. I speak not of forcible annexation, for that can not be
thought of. That, by our code of morality, would be criminal
aggression.' Thereupon I review these alternatives, in the
light of President Grant's measured words, uttered in 1875,
when after seven years of sanguinary, destructive, and cruel
hostilities in Cuba he reached the conclusion that the
recognition of the independence of Cuba was impracticable and
indefensible; and that the recognition of belligerence was not
warranted by the facts according to the tests of public law. I
commented especially upon the latter aspect of the question,
pointing out the inconveniences and positive dangers of a
recognition of belligerence which, while adding to the already
onerous burdens of neutrality within our own jurisdiction,
could not in any way extend our influence or effective offices
in the territory of hostilities. Nothing has since occurred to
change my view in this regard; and I recognize as fully now as
then that the issuance of a proclamation of neutrality, by which
process the so-called recognition of belligerents is
published, could, of itself and unattended by other action,
accomplish nothing toward the one end for which we labor—the
instant pacification of Cuba and the cessation of the misery
that afflicts the island.
"Turning to the question of recognizing at this time the

independence of the present insurgent government in Cuba, we
find safe precedents in our history from an early day. They
are well summed up in President Jackson's message to Congress,
December 21, 1836, on the subject of the recognition of the
independence of Texas. He said: 'In all the contests that have
arisen out of the revolutions of France, out of the disputes
relating to the Crowns of Portugal and Spain, out of the
separation of the American possessions of both from the
European Governments, and out of the numerous and constantly
occurring struggles for dominion in Spanish America, so wisely
consistent with our just principles has been the action of our
Government that we have, under the most critical
circumstances, avoided all censure, and encountered no other
evil than that produced by a transient estrangement of good
will in those against whom we have been by force of evidence
compelled to decide. It has thus made known to the world that
the uniform policy and practice of the United States is to
avoid all interference in disputes which merely relate to the
internal government of other nations, and eventually to
recognize the authority of the prevailing party without
reference to our particular interests and views or to the
merits of the original controversy. … But on this, as on every
other trying occasion, safety is to be found in a rigid
adherence to principle. In the contest between Spain and the
revolted colonies we stood aloof, and waited not only until
the ability of the new States to protect themselves was fully
established, but until the danger of their being again
subjugated had entirely passed away.
{588}
Then, and not until then, were they recognized. Such was our
course in regard to Mexico herself. … It is true that with
regard to Texas the civil authority of Mexico has been
expelled, its invading army defeated, the chief of the
Republic himself captured, and all present power to control
the newly-organized government of Texas annihilated within its
confines; but, on the other hand, there is, in appearance at
least, an immense disparity of physical force on the side of
Texas. The Mexican Republic, under another Executive, is
rallying its forces under a new leader and menacing a fresh
invasion to recover its lost dominion. Upon the issue of this
threatened invasion the independence of Texas may be
considered as suspended; and were there nothing peculiar in
the relative situation of the United States and Texas, our
acknowledgment of its independence at such a crisis could
scarcely be regarded as consistent with that prudent reserve
with which we have hitherto held ourselves bound to treat all
similar questions.'
"Thereupon Andrew Jackson proceeded to consider the risk that

there might be imputed to the United States motives of selfish
interest in view of the former claim on our part to the
territory of Texas, and of the avowed purpose of the Texans in
seeking recognition of independence as an incident to the
incorporation of Texas in the Union, concluding thus:
'Prudence, therefore, seems to dictate that we should still
stand aloof and maintain our present attitude, if not until
Mexico itself or one of the great foreign powers shall
recognize the independence of the new government, at least
until the lapse of time or the course of events shall have
proved beyond cavil or dispute the ability of the people of
that country to maintain their separate sovereignty and to
uphold the government constituted by them. Neither of the
contending parties can justly complain of this course. By
pursuing it we are but carrying out the long-established
policy of our Government, a policy which has secured to us
respect and influence abroad and inspired confidence at home.'
"These are the words of the resolute and patriotic Jackson.

They are evidence that the United States, in addition to the
test imposed by public law as the condition of the recognition
of independence by a neutral state (to wit, that the revolted
state shall 'constitute in fact a body politic, having a
government in substance as well as in name, possessed of the
elements of stability,' and forming de facto, 'if left to
itself, a state among the nations, reasonably capable of
discharging the duties of a state'), has imposed for its own
governance in dealing with cases like these the further
condition that recognition of independent statehood is not due

Transparency Society and Subjectivity 1St Ed Edition Emmanuel Alloa Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Transparency Society and Subjectivity 1St Ed Edition Emmanuel Alloa Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Transparency, Society and Subjectivity

1st ed. Edition Emmanuel Alloa

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

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

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

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937890

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: BubbleTree, www.bubbletree.fr, Pierre-Stéphane Dumas

Printed on acid-free paper

Transparency: Thinking Through an Opaque Concept 1

 ot such Wicked Leaks 15

Part I Transparency in the Making 19

 ransparency: A Magic Concept of Modernity 21

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

 he Dream of Transparency: Aquinas, Rousseau, Sartre 85

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

 ransparency, Humanism, and the Politics of the Future Before

Part II Under the Crystal Dome 177

 ublicity and Transparency: The Itinerary of a Subtle

 egulation and Transparency as Rituals of Distrust: Reading

 ot Individuals, Relations: What Transparency Is Really

 he Privatization of Human Interests or, How Transparency

 ransparency and Subjectivity: Remembering Jennifer

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

 irtual Transparency: From the Panopticon to the Expository

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

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

Transparency: A Magic Concept of Modernity

E. Alloa (*) • D. Thomä

© The Author(s) 2018 1

part of a certain Puritan ethos to live without curtains, signaling that

the historical circumstances which allowed the concept of t­ ransparency to

Diderot embraces roleplay as part and parcel of social existence:

In “Seeing It All: Bentham’s Panopticon and the Dark Spots of

In public discourse, transparency is widely considered a self-evident

publicity from transparency by drawing on the polyvalence in the seman-

In his contribution, “Obfuscated Transparency,” Dieter Mersch reflects

“out there,” under conditions of sociality and sharedness. In this respect,

war on terrorism—to drone strikes and other new digital technologies of

imperii—have a tendency to make a secret of their own dependence on

© The Author(s) 2018 15

 mbassies Have Morphed into Espionage

A Real Secret Is an Empty Secret

Technology Now Advances Crabwise

drawers. Ultimately, the attempted Watergate break-in was less successful

© The Author(s) 2018 21

See, also (in this volume),

"The tariff act of 1894 had repealed the provisions as to

See below: A. D. 1899-1901.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (April-October).

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (June).

See (in this volume)

On the 3d of November, 1897, Mr. Rounseville Wildman, the U.

"I have to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch Number 19

Treaty of Peace and Accompanying Papers

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (November).

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (December).

See (in this volume)

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897-1898 (December-March).

See (in this volume)

Transparency: Thinking Through an Opaque Concept 1

ot such Wicked Leaks 15

Part I Transparency in the Making 19

ransparency: A Magic Concept of Modernity 21

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

he Dream of Transparency: Aquinas, Rousseau, Sartre 85

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

ransparency, Humanism, and the Politics of the Future Before

Part II Under the Crystal Dome 177

ublicity and Transparency: The Itinerary of a Subtle

egulation and Transparency as Rituals of Distrust: Reading

ot Individuals, Relations: What Transparency Is Really

he Privatization of Human Interests or, How Transparency

ransparency and Subjectivity: Remembering Jennifer

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

irtual Transparency: From the Panopticon to the Expository

the historical circumstances which allowed the concept of t ransparency to

mbassies Have Morphed into Espionage

A Real Secret Is an Empty Secret

Technology Now Advances Crabwise