ITMA: Byung-Chul Han
IV.
The Information Society
It could be argued that philosophy begins and ends in Plato's Cave. At any rate, that's where we find ourselves once again in chapter 7 of The Transparency Society [a] ...
Upon inspection, Byung-Chul Han decides Plato's cave is constructed as a kind of shadow theatre, in which even the objects casting shadows are not real things as such, but merely "theatrical figures and props" [37]. Real things and their shadows exist only outside of the cave, in the world of natural light (i.e., the medium of truth).
Interestingly, Han suggests:
"Plato's allegory does not represent different modes of cognition, as his interpreters commonly claim; rather, it represents different ways of living, that is, narrative and cognitive modes of existence. [...] In the allegory of the cave, the theatre as a world of narration stands opposed to the world of insight." [38]
You might think that Han would, as a philosopher, opt for the latter; but he seems to favour sitting by an artificial fire enjoying scenic illusions and spinning tales of his own. "The light of truth", he says, "denarrativizes the world" [38] and annihilates the play of appearances. And that's why the society of transparency - like Plato's Republic - "is a society without poets, without seduction or metamorphosis" [39].
Han - as a Heideggerian - has a soft-spot for poets: "After all, it is the poet who produces scenic illusions , forms of appearance, and ritual and ceremonial signs; he sets artifacts and antifacts against hyperreal, naked evidence." [39]
Having said that, Han is not entirely pro-darkness and anti-light - and he doesn't think these things separately: "Light and darkness are coeval. Light and shadow belong together. [...] The light of reason and the darkness of the irrational [...] bring each other forth." [39]
And for Han, the transparency society (in contrast to Plato's world), "lacks divine light inhabited by metaphysical tension" [39]. He continues:
"The society of transparency is see-through [...] It is not illuminated by light that streams from a transcendent source. [...] The medium of transparency is not light, but rather lightless radiation; instead of illuminating, it suffuses everything and makes it see-through. In contrast to light, it is penetrating and intrusive. Moreover, its effect is homogenizing and leveling, whereas metaphysical light generates hierarchies and distinctions; thereby it creates order and points of orientation." [39]
The society of transparency may not wish to create order in the sense that Han thinks it here - but it certainly likes to generate (and accumulate) masses of information and innumerable images [b]. Why? Because, says Han, it wishes to disguise its own emptiness.
Unfortunately, all the information and imagery in the world doesn't prevent the growing void at the heart of our world ...
The Society of Unveiling
"In a certain sense, the eighteenth century was not entirely unlike the present. It already knew the pathos of unveiling and transparency." [42]
For it was, after all, the century of Rousseau, author of Les Confessions and one of the central figures within the Age of Enlightenment. Rousseau it is, who calls upon all men to unveil themselves, in the sincere belief that truth loves to go naked [c].
Thus whilst the eighteenth century was still a theatrum mundi - full of scenes, masks, and figures - "Rousseau's demand for transparency announces a paradigm shift" [43]. He explicitly "sets his discourse of the heart and truth against the play of masks and roles" [43] and "vehemently criticizes the plan to erect a theatre in Geneva" [43], on the grounds that it will be a "site of disguise, appearance, and seduction lacking all transparency" [43-44].
If, as a Nietzschean, I already had problems with Rousseau, Byung-Chul Han convinces me to despise him still further:
"In Rousseau, one can observe how the morality of total transparency necessarily switches to tyranny. The heroic project of transparency - wanting to tear down veils, bring everything to light, and drive away darkness - leads to violence. The prohibition against the theatre and mimesis, which Plato had already legislated for his ideal city, impresses totalitarian traits on Rousseau's transparent society." [44]
In sum: "Rousseau's society of transparency turns out to be a society of total control and surveillance." [44] It differs from our world only in that digital transparency "is not cardiographic but pornographic" [44] and its goal "is not moral purification of the heart, but maximal profit" [44].
The Society of Control
The digital panopticon of the 21st-century is fundamentally different to the model designed by the English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham in the 18th-century. For whereas the latter offers perspectival surveillance from a central point, the former offers aperspectival illumination of everyone from everywhere (by anyone).
Bentham's panopticon is very much a product of disciplinary society. But, as Han has argued throughout his book, this model has given way to the society of transparency and control. Thus we possess a distinct panoptic structure of our own; we call it social media and we all "actively collaborate in its construction and maintenance" [46], surrendering our privacy and making a pornographic spectacle of ourselves:
"The society of control achieves perfection when subjects bare themselves not through outer constraint but through self-generated need, that is, when the fear of having to abandon one's private and intimate sphere yields to the need to put oneself on display without shame." [46]
We might say that we are enslaved by our own will to exhibitionism and voyeurism.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there are lots of techno-utopians ready to celebrate surveillance and advocate the move towards a completely transparent society - Han mentions the work of sci-fi author David Brin, for example [d]. Such totalitarian fantasists are as despicable as Rousseau.
However, Han also worries me when he reads all this as a moral crisis:
"Strident calls for transparency point to the simple fact that the moral foundation of society has grown faulty, that moral values such as honesty and uprightness are losing their meaning more and more." [48]
There are no simple facts, and it's shameful for a philosopher to speak of such. What Han offers is a simplistic reading of an increasingly complex world and the very last thing we need is to make a vain attempt to restore (or return to) our moral foundations (or get back to basics).
And, let me add in closing, I prefer the idea of chance gatherings of individuals pursuing a shared interest or clustering around a favourite thing, to a community in the strong sense of the term. Such gatherings may lack spirit and prove incapable of mutual political action, but I don't want to belong to any kind of Gemeinschaft thank you very much and I would remind Han of something Heidegger once wrote:
"The much-invoked 'community' still does not guarantee 'truth'; the
'community' can very well go astray and abide in errancy even more and
even more obstinately than the individual." [e]
Notes
[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015). I remind readers that all page numbers given in the post are references to this work and that titles given in bold are Han's.
[b] Although Han considers Heidegger's concept of Ge-stell (a way of revealing usually translated as enframing) in order to explain this technological proliferation of data and images, he argues that it is of limited use in describing the transparency society in that it only considers things in terms of power and domination and "does not encompass the forms of positioning that are characteristic of today" [40], such as exhibiting [Aus-Stellen] or putting-on-display [Zur-Schau-Stellen]. Ultimately, today's "multimediated mass of information [and simulacra] present things more as an accumulation [Ge-Menge] than as a 'framing'" [40].
[c] For many years, I believed that the line: "Craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked" was one of Rousseau's (and I'm pretty sure I was told this by Malcolm McLaren). But it seems that credit should actually be given to the British physician and author Thomas Fuller (1654-1734). See his work of 1732, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings ...
[d] See David Brin's non-fictional work, The Transparent Society, (Perseus Books, 1998).
[e] Martin Heidegger, 'Ponderings and Intimations III', 153, in Ponderings
II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana
University Press, 2016), p. 127.
To read part one of this post, click here.
To read part two of this post, click here.
