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Virtual Transparency: From the Panopticon to the Expository Society and Beyond

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Transparency, Society and Subjectivity

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Abstract

In a previous book, Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age (2015), Bernard Harcourt explored our new digital age and its many seductions—how our own desires to take selfies, post Snapchats, and stream NetFlix unwittingly feed the surveillance machinery of the NSA, Google, Facebook, etc. Harcourt argued that we have entered an “expository society” where we increasingly exhibit ourselves online and freely give away our most personal data. While this remains true, the relation of our digital exposure to the more violent practices associated with the war on terrorism requires more detailed attention. By starting in 1973, when Foucault delivers his lectures on “The Punitive Society,” the chapter begins to explore what lies beyond the expository society by focusing on how our expository techniques of surveillance relate to our new counterinsurgency warfare paradigm of governing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As a physician, Julius “worked on the staff of poorhouses and in the military” (Johnston 2000: 180 n.47). Julius was also a noted prison reformer (Singer and Adler 1916: 392).

  2. 2.

    Julius lectured in Berlin in 1827 “under the auspices of the newly formed Verein für die Besserung der Stafgefangen, a prisoners’ aid society” (Johnston 2000: 180 n.47).

  3. 3.

    I will use sécurité to refer to the term Foucault originally coined and later renamed gouvernementalité, and will reserve the term “governm entality” to refer to later work that is generally referred to as his “govern mentality studies.”

  4. 4.

    Special thanks to François Ewald who pointed me to this passage from the interview in April 2013 (e-mail on file with author).

  5. 5.

    For the conventional definition of literal transparency and the contrast with phenomenal transparency, (see Rowe and Slutzky 1963), and (see Rowe and Slutzky 1971). For a contextualization of these texts, see (Mertins 1996; Krauss 1980; and Somol 1994). Special thanks to Jonah Rowen.

  6. 6.

    That is, for those who do not simply debunk the idea of phenomenal transparency as merely a hermeneutic phantom or as a ghost, see Krauss 1980; Martin 2010: 55–57; Martin 2003 ( discussing the shallowness and thinness of the transparency metaphor).

  7. 7.

    In Johnson’s glass house, it serves as the fireplace/chimney and the bathroom.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Bernard E. Harcourt

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  1. Bernard E. Harcourt
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Correspondence to Bernard E. Harcourt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Emmanuel Alloa

  2. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Dieter Thomä

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Harcourt, B.E. (2018). Virtual Transparency: From the Panopticon to the Expository Society and Beyond. In: Alloa, E., Thomä, D. (eds) Transparency, Society and Subjectivity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8_18

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