On the notion of transparency in Byung-Chul Han and the defense of our discredited opacity

Abstract

Transparency is a long-standing modern ideal that new technologies have rejuvenated and made ubiquitous in current discussions of power, digital culture, and control. In this article, we propose an analysis of the notion of transparency throughout four works by the contemporary philosopher Byung-Chul Han: The Burnout Society, Topology of violence, Society of transparency and Psychopolitics. This journey will allow us to suggest a genealogy of this notion in Han's work. Transparency will be analyzed as the result of the performance society, as a form of violence, as an economic and cultural phenomenon and as a neoliberal device. These approaches proposed by Han represent a change in the disciplinary paradigm elaborated by Foucault: contemporary society would be more a performance society than a disciplinary society. In our final remarks, we will highlight some criticisms of the book Psychopolitics. If transparency is a device that generates selective visibility to reproduce a neoliberal order, a critical discourse on transparency should not make the perspectives that oppose this device invisible. In this direction, we have suggested four perspectives that group collective and individual lines of action that confront the neoliberal transparency device.