The Ideology of Transparency: Creating the New Sodom and Gomorrah
“Let us be straightforward and say that our age is not that of secrets, but of their opposite, transparency. There is even, more or less confusedly, an ideology of transparency that implicitly assimilates transparency to truth, to rectitude and even to innocence, while conversely secrets would entail, with respect to what they hide or do not confess, something shameful and sinful. The ideology of transparency supposes that all can be exposed, become public so as to be submitted to the scrutiny of others, to even be the object of procedures of surveillance and of control. What is most disturbing is that the ideology of transparency is today often tied to the idea of democracy. As if the progress of democracy were correlative to the extension of transparency and to the retreating of secrets. But who does not see that this democracy would resemble a dungeon without walls or locks, a dungeon extended to the whole of society, as the life of democratic man would be to a hell?” (Yves Charles Zarka, “Ce secret qui nous tient,” Cités 26, 2006; reprinted in La destitution des intellectuels)[1]