Open 19 - Beyond Privacy

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Open 19: Beyond Privacy. New Perspectives on the Private and Public Domains | SKOR

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Open 19: Beyond Privacy. New Perspectives on the Private and Public Domains | SKOR

Sumbadze.

Jorinde Seijdel

Editorial

Beyond Privacy

New Perspectives on the Private and Public Domains

Online article

Rudi LaermansCommunicative Sovereignty

Online article

The import of the pair of concepts public and private, long considered the

expression of an architectural fundamental truth, has expanded, even become

existential, with the rise of modern methods of communication. Owing to the

fact that private life has become completely interwoven with the (digital)

outside world, the concept of privacy in this day and age holds many

paradoxes. According to Belgian sociologist Rudi Laermans, the need for a no

mans land, free of all interchange, beyond or beside the law, is only the

greater for this.

Online article


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Armin Medosch

Margins of Freedom

Privacy and the Politics of Labour and Information

Online article

Media artist, writer and curator Armin Medosch researches the development inthe meaning of the term freedom and the idea of privacy that goes with it.

The solution to the current crisis concerning privacy stretches beyond finding a

new balance between private and public. According to Medosch, the solutions

should be sought in the realm of the digital commons, where freedom is not

seen as something to achieve on ones own by accumulating possessions, but as

something that is created by sharing knowledge.

Felix Stalder

Autonomy and Control in the Era of Post-Privacy

Online article

Researcher Felix Stalder analyses the loss of the key role of the concept of

privacy. Privacy long secured the balance between the control of institutions

and the autonomy of the citizen. Today, with institutions aiming more and more

to provide customized services and the autonomy of both citizens and

institutions changing, this role is disappearing, making the danger of an

increase in control and power a realistic one. To turn the tide, Stalder argues

for a greater transparency of the back-end protocols, algorithms and procedures

f th fl ibl b i


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The Sentient City Survival Kit

Online article

To what extent can artists and designers develop instruments that, using the

newest digital technology, question how we will live our lives in the (near)

future? In search of an answer, the editors of Open asked artist, architect and

researcher Mark Shepard to write about his research project The Sentient City

Survival Kit.

Rob van Kranenburg

From Privacy to Privacies

Online article

Rob van Kranenburg explores the field of the Internet of Things and is founder

of the think-tank Council.1 With regard to the infrastructure of technologies

and networks that connect us with one another and our environment, he argues

in favour of making concepts of privacy operational from the bottom up. Only

then can we free ourselves from the primacy of the security mentality.

Books

Online bookreviews

Dominic van den Boogerd

Wouter Davidts and Kim Paice (eds.), The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work

M ij O d


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Open /No. /Beyond Privacy Communicative Sovereignty

Whereof one cannot speak, thereofone must be silent.(Wittgenstein, once again)

Inside/Outside

An indoor business, a matter ofevents that take place behind closed

doors and under lock and key, privatelife might seem to be walled offfromprying eyes, writes the French histo-rian Georges Duby in his foreword toA History of Private Life, a five-vol-ume series spanning a period of overtwo millennia. Duby alludes to theetymology of theLatin wordpriva-tus, which amongother things meanssecluded and freeof, and simultane-ously affirms the accepted view of thedistinction between private and publiclife: the first takes place indoors, thesecond outdoors. Between the indoorand outdoor space are walls, partitionsthat shelter and protect but never onlytake the form of closures. Windowsprovide visual contact with the sur-roundings outside the space, doorsopen and shut: they enable inter-changes between inside and outside.Precisely because it can be opened, aclosed door gives a stronger feelingof seclusion than an undifferentiated

wall. At the same time, it symbolizesthe possibility of breaking throughthe boundary of the private sphere atany moment and socializing, as theexpression goes. We are boundary-goers who separate in order to con-nect: we erect a material boundary

in stone or concrete between indoorsand outdoors, but do not live in aprison. In recognition of that fact, theGerman philosopher and sociologistGeorg Simmel gives a semi-metaphys-ical interpretation of the phenomenonof the door at the end of his essayBridge and Door: Just as the form-

less limitation takes on a shape, itslimitedness finds its significance anddignity only in that which the mobil-ity of the door i llustrates: in the pos-sibility at any moment of stepping outof the limitation into freedom.

e topologicalview of the differ-ence between pri-vate and public isessentially architectural. Architecture,both as a design practice and theoreti-cal construct, never works exclusivelywith a neutral, purely mathematicallydefined space, but always presupposesthe possibility of a qualitative dichot-omy between inside and outside.Doing architecture means differenti-ating between an inside and outside;therefore, the basic medium of archi-tecture is the screen, which assumesthe form of a closure (the wall), anopening (the window) or both (thedoor). Inside/outside is the fundamen-tal differential for all architecture, itsuniversal basic model to which it givesform, and which design practice con-

tinually repeats and shifts, quotes andvaries. Architecture can be designedand presented in countless ways, butyou know it is architecture only whenyou can go inside and come back outagain, and when the relations changewith this going-inside-and-coming-

. Georges Duby, Fore-word to A History of Pri-vate Life, in: Paul Veyne(ed.),A History of PrivateLife 1: From Pagan Rometo Byzantium (Boston:Harvard University Press,), viii.

. Georg Simmel, Bridgeand Door, eory, Culture& Society, vol. ()no. , .

Rudi Laermans

Communicative

Sovereignty

e import of thepair of conceptspublic and private,long consideredthe expression of

an architecturalfundamental truth,has expanded, evenbecome existen-tial, with the rise ofmodern methodsof communication.Owing to the factthat private life hasbecome completely

interwoven withthe (digital) outsideworld, the conceptof privacy in this

day and age holdsmany paradoxes.According to Belgiansociologist RudiLaermans, the needfor a no mans land,free of all inter-

change, beyond orbeside the law, isonly the greater forthis.


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back-out; in other words, somethingdifferent happens and can be expectedinside than outside. However, thecombination of thedifference betweeninside and outsidewith the private/public distinctionno longer expressesan architecturalbut an existential basic truth: man isan animal that makes a home for him-self by giving his body an imaginaryextension, projecting it in a space thats/he can call my own. A home pre-supposes architecture, but is essentiallya form of body culture and, all thingsconsidered, a curious mixture of nakedbiological life and civilization.

e Postmodern Living Capsulee twentieth century thoroughlyoverturned mans being-in-the-worldby making residence explicit. emodernist movement redefined thehome as an abstract function withbasic variables and thus took it outof the domain of the self-evident,and also out of the domain of socialstanding and representation.emost important design outcome wasthe generic apartment block, whichundoubtedly will also remain thedominant type of housing in the

future. It is the breeding ground ofthe present-day apartment individu-alism as well. In the last part of histrilogySpheres, Peter Sloterdijk usesthis neologism to crystallize one ofthe basic intuitions in his diagnosisof the present era. According to him,

todays individualism combines apsychological-mental attitude with anentirety of place-specific self-practicesaimed at self-stimulation and self-indulgence.e private spatial spheretherefore has transformed into a com-fortable egosphere or self container,the individual home into a spatialimmune system, a defensive meas-ure by which an area of well-being isclosed to intruders and other bringersof nausea.ere is a word for thishypertrophying ofthe private sphere:cocooning. eexpression sounds dated now, but inthe rich West or the internal space ofworld capital (Sloterdijk) cocooningremains a dominant trend. e factthat we are hearing less talk of thisonly proves that by now the trend hasmorphed into a generalized conditionof life. Cocooning is the expression atthe social micro level of the more gen-eral process of foaming (Sloterdijk)or capsularizing (De Cauter). Indeed,the longer the more, we live in a soci-ety that resembles a gigantic chain ofmutually isolated bubbles or capsulespiled atop one another. As Lieven deCauter notes in e Capsule and theNetwork: We could come up witha whole range of new spaces that arecapsular. We could call the capsularhouse acocoon, and self-containedcomplexes (airports, shopping malls,all-in hotels) could be designated enve-lopes, leaving theterm enclavefortheme parks, shop-ping streets andghettos.

From the German philosopher Leib-niz comes the idea that we live in thebest of all possible worlds: Tout estpour le mieux dans le meilleur desmondes possibles. From the cosmo-logical point of view the expressionseems implausible, but it is made tomeasure for the way in which thestandard living capsule is experiencedby its occupant(s). is is indeed aspecial type ofmachine habiter.e domestic cocoon is simultane -ously a conservatory with a relativelyconstant climate, a high-tech well-ness centre and a junction of virtuallines of communication that can beactualized at any moment. Previ-ously, the home was a social isolationcell for the nuclear family, whichgenerally maintained a highly selec-tive entrance policy at the front door;now, it is no longer a social igno-rance machine but a communicativecockpit, an inside in which onewithdraws from direct, physical ly-based contact with others with aneye to more indirect communicationthrough various forms of media.e ego oriented to self-stimulationwants to control communicationwith other s as much as possible andtherefore prefers to look at the mes-sages of others on a television orcomputer screen than to confront thedirect gaze of a stranger in physical

public space. e imaginary Otheris no longer an unfathomable beingbut the virtual world of informationpossibilities that one can log intofrom the living capsule (there alsois a new Real Other: the enigmaticoperating program, the underlying

code and algorithms with which onenavigates in the digital world).

e paradoxical enclosure of thebarred social outside in the privateinside has two preconditions. efirst concerns the outdoor space orenvironment: it is reduced to a col-lection of contactable addresses anda multiple information provider. einformation that is brought insideoften is about the outside, even themost immediate surroundings. Forexample, someone wanting to knowexactly what the weather is like doesnot look out the window or step out-side the door but consults the muchmore exact information provided bythe local meteorological institute onthe Internet. e second preconditionconcerns the indoor space: it is usedas a communications control room.e dwelling capsule is a multiplereceptor, a terminal of words, imagesand sounds that can be called up andremoved, cherished and forgotten(and then eventually reactivated) bythe resident(s) at will. When the avail-able information channels also offerpossibilities to answer or interact,they are likewise highly selectively uti-lized in accordance with the wishes ofones own self. e spatial isolation ofthe home is especially prized becauseit offers rest, permits an often absent-minded submergence of the self in

the stream of information under con-sideration. e couch potato and thenerd are the new psychophysical idealtypes that everybody laughs at becausethey represent the extreme poles of ascale on which they themselves alsohold a position.

. Dirk Baecker, DieDekonstruktion der Sch-achtel: Innen und Aussenin der Architektur, in:Niklas Luhmann, Freder-ick D. Bunsen and DirkBaecker, UnbeoabachtbareWelt: ber Kunst und

Architektur(Bielefeld:

Haux, ), .

. Peter Sloterdijk, SphrenIII: Schume(Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp,), .

. Lieven De Cauter, eCapsule and the Network:Notes for a General e-ory, in: Lieven De Cauter,e Capsular Civilization:On the City in the Age ofFear(Rotterdam: NAiPublishers,).


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Communicative Sovereignty

e contemporary subject is a multi-ple sovereign. e traditional spatialprivacy within the home generates amodest and both legally and biopo-litically constricted, although not lessreal form of territorial sovereignty.It is also the habitat of actions that toa certain extent imitate the public lifeof the state: individually or togetherwith a life companion making (house)rules, setting up design budgets, for-mulating priorities for the midterm . .. Nowadays, territorial sovereignty inthe dwelling-place is especially valuedfor its symbiosis with the communi-cative sovereignty offered by variousforms of telecommunications. Onecan sovereignly connect to the massmedia and zap away like the King ofthe Kingdom, in the full awarenessthat individual choices are indirectlysteered by social determinants. osewho log into the offerings of the massmedia voluntarily become members ofa primarily passive audience, regard-less of the fact that it regularly sendsits more active representatives tovarious sorts of reality television. isaudience has no physical contours butonly exists as a temporary attentioncommunity that is spread over count-less points in space and continuouslyin statu nascendi. Here you have the

postmodern social order in a nutshell:no question of a substantial integra-tion on the basis of collectively sharednorms or values, but a floating, inces-santly remade instant integrationwithin networks of mass communica-tion, thanks to the short-lived collec-

tive attention for sensational themes.Its herald is not Guy Debord, who inLa Socit du Spectaclestill thinks toomuch in terms of false appearanceand authentic being, but rather theGerman sociologist Niklas Luhmann.As early as , Luhmann observedthat the primary social function ofthe mass media lies in the participa-tion of all in a common reality, ormore precisely,in the creation ofsuch an impres-sion, which thenimposes itselfas operative fic-tion and becomesreality.

In the private sphere, one canalso turn against the receptive pas-sivity of the mass media and opt forthe interactivity of the Internet andother digital information possibilities.Whatever the motive for this intel-lectual snobbery or, on the contrary,the simple need as an intellectual flexworker to stay informed (what exactlyis the difference?) people want tohave communicative autonomy. Bothmodes passivity (the mass media)and interactivity (telephony, the Inter-net) are governed by the sovereignability to refuse, receive and sendinformation. e hyper-individualizedsubject cherishes this communica-

tive sovereignty and values territorialsovereignty within the home largelyas a precondition to that. Tradition-ally, thanks to screening off, spatialprivacy was synonymous with refusingpossibilities for communication, withsaying no to the self s inescapable

transformation into a source of visualinformation or potential verbal com-munication when in physical publicspace. e no to public life generallywent together with a greatly reducedsocial yes: inside the home, com-munication remained limited to even-tual housemates and invited friendsor acquaintances who dropped by.Conversely, the structural coupling ofthe home with network space has cre-ated a virtual social world of optionaltelecommunications that positivelyredefines the earlier refusal to com-municate. e digital revolution is thetemporary endpoint of this transfor-mation. We postmoderns can lead asovereign social life within doors thatdoes not shut out but includes a broadrange of contacts out of doors. Privatelife no longer means only minimal orzero sociability, but is becoming com-pletely interwoven with an often com-plex network sociality. Sociability isnonverbal and verbal communicationin a situation of physical co-presence,or the interaction between peoplewho are physically present; socialityis telecommunications, or the pas-sive or interactive connection withpeople who are not physically present.In the postmodern age, socialitydominates sociability, while commu-nicative sovereignty dominates ter-ritorial sovereignty. e postmodern

subject remains physically interactive,naturally, but is above all connec-tive; he or she indeed still maintainsdirect relationships, but primarilyhas network contacts. Descartes gaveto modernity the adage Cogito ergosum, which is fitting for a highly

introverted, inward-directed privateexistence; postmodernism recognizesitself in the as-yet-unclaimed motto,I exist because I am connected.

Secrete Modern Movement in architec-ture made residence reflexive; thedigital revolution, which has pressedahead without a self-appointed avant-garde, exposes the hard core of bothindividual privacy and private life:keeping information about oneselfsecret when communicating with oth-ers. e French historian Grard Vin-cent is right when he calls the secretthe red thread in the history of pri-vate life not the total secret, whichby definition leaves no traces, butthe shifting boundary between whatis said and what is not, according totime and place.e etymology of theFrench and Englishword secret, likethat of the wordprivacy, bringsus to the idea ofseclusion. Secretrefers to the Latin secretus, the pastparticiple of the verb secerno, whichmeans to separate or seclude. e per-sonal secret does not entirely secludean individual from the public sphere,but introduces a separation within the

whole of possible communicationsabout oneself. Certain informationabout the self is structurally isolatedas incommunicable from all other,communicable information. e sepa-ration procedure in principle takeslittle effort, for simply not communi-

. Niklas Luhmann,Vernderungen im Sys-tem gesellschaftlicherKommunikation und dieMassenmedien, in: NiklasLuhmann, Soziologische

Aufklrung 3: SozialesSystem, Gesellschaft,Organisation (Opladen:

Westdeutscher Verlag,), .

. Grard Vincent, Eengeschiedenis van hetgeheim?, in: AntoineProst and Grard Vincent(eds.), Geschiedenis vanhet persoonlijk leven 5:Van de Eerste Wereldoorlogtot onze tijd(Amsterdam:

Agon, ), .


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cating is sufficient: withholding infor-mation is a form of remaining silent.e unspoken information remainsinside, with the individual whosepersonal life is also the subject matterof the information. is is why GeorgSimmel calls secrets inner privateproperty in the detailed chapter thathe devotes to the secret and the secretsociety in his Soziologie().

e personalsecret is private ina double sense: itis about someonesprivate life, andit is secluded andguarded withinit. Partly for thisreason, personalsecrets form theessence of a persons private life. eycan refer to actions that a person only

carries out in a situation of soc ialisolation, but also include thoughts,desires, emotions . . . (which bydefinition are a private matter: everyhuman consciousness is an impen-etrable black box for others). einformation about ones own self thatis not shared or shared only with oneor two others, is in the final instancea possible truth about that self. Apersonal secret is an intimate truththat must remain concealed becauseit can embarrass, socially discredit or

disgrace an individual. By no meansis it always about forbidden desires,taboo ideas or deviant behaviour.e mass media employ this limiteddefinition of the personal secret. eyhave latched onto and spread the ideathat secret information is always sen-

sational, whereas personal secrets areoften of a more prosaic nature. eoutwardly decisive manager who fre-quently hesitates in making necessarydecisions and sometimes simply doesnot know what to do, also has a per-sonal secret. e informational valueof the personal secret does not lie inthe contents of the information itselfbut in the social effect that its even-tual exposure would produce.

Speaking/Remaining SilentIf human sociation is conditioned bythe capacity to speak, it is shaped bythe capacity to be silent, commentedSimmel in one of the rare footnotesin his Soziologie. It is an apt observa-tion, shatteringwith one well-aimed blow the present-day fixation

on communication, transparency andune parole vraie. To be sure, man is atalking animal that,paceHeidegger,prefers the oblivion within the babbleof the one to an authentic existence.But a being that speaks can also con-sciously choose mutism. According tothe Canadian sociologist Erving Goff-man, who in e Presentation of Selfstretched Simmels footnote into anentire book, we constantly engage inselective information management inour contacts with others, with an eye

towards a desired self-image. Play-ing a role in thisare general socialnorms or expecta-tions that go together with ones socialposition as well as more individualnotions about how one would like to

be seen. Overall, information manage-ment complies with the rule that peo-ple want to make a good impression,which is also the reason that Goffmanspeaks of impression management.In carrying out this pursuit, a personselectively reveals information abouthim or herself and maintains a pub-lic self-image in which all individualshortcomings have been rubbed outas much as possible. Personal secretsare the flip side of the picture Goff-man himself speaks of the backstage the inevitable by-product of thispursuit. e Twittering, e-mailing,text messaging or otherwise digitallynetworked individual also keeps com-municating because of an essentiallynarcissistic craving for social recogni-tion: Facebook is one gigantic form offace-work.

Information control is impression

management is communicative sov-ereignty. Todays individuals feel likecommunication sovereigns in frontof their PC screens because they havea myriad of information possibili-ties, addresses and connections to dowith as they please. But the core ofeveryones communicative sovereigntyremains connected with the possibil-ity of withholding information aboutoneself, just as in the past. Its natureis indeed rather paradoxical becauseit does not refer to the ability to say

more, but to say precisely nothing.is ability to not communicate alsodefines the ability to communicate:the latter encloses the former, thenegation is constitutive for the affir-mation. We have a private life in themost literal sense, a life secluded from

others, because we can remain silentabout ourselves in our dealings withthem. Privacy therefore exists in asfar as we can be social in an asocialmanner, can have personal secrets inpublic communications. e presentascendancy of sociality over sociabil-ity, of indirect over direct communica-tion, changes nothing in that regard.

Confidentiale negation of the ability to commu-nicate about oneself in turn includesa possible negation. ose who har-bour personal secrets can also alwaysdivulge them in total sovereignty: theprivacy of the personal secret existsonly thanks to the possibility of itsabolition. As a rule, the self-disclosureor confidence creates a bond of trust,a small-scale secret fellowship between

intimates who communicate inti-mately among themselves. Intimatecommunication is governed by theobligation of confidentiality and dis-cretion. What is told must not be toldfurther (confidentiality, or the require-ment of exclusivity); and what is nottold must not be questioned further(discretion, or the requirement of reti-cence). e divulgence of the secretthus does not lift the seal of secrecyon the shared information, but onlyenlarges the circle of parties to the

secret: it turns individual privacy intoa socially shared privacy. e mediumin which the information is sharedmakes a difference, however.

In his reflections on the secret,Simmel introduces two elaborations.e first concerns jewellery, which he

. Georg Simmel, DasGeheimnis und die gehe-ime Gesellschaft, in:Georg Simmel, Soziologie:Untersuchungen ber dieFormen der Vergesells-chaftung(Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, ),-. Partial Englishtranslation: Georg Simmel,Secrecy, in: Kurt H. Wolff(ed.),e Sociology ofGeorg Simmel(New York:e Free Press, ),-.

. Simmel, Secrecy, op.cit. (note ), .

. Erving Goffman,ePresentation of Self inEveryday Life(London:Penguin Books, ).


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considers the opposite of the secret.People who wear jewellery want tocall attention to themselves: they arenot keeping silent about themselvesbut on the contrary wish to show offtheir own personality, or a facet of it,to better advantage. e second excur-sion is about written communication.is is essentially the opposite of thepractice of secrecy, as Simmel pointsout: writing is a medium hostile tosecrets, for written intercourse has apublic nature that is only potential, tobe sure, but also essentially unlimited.Writing possesses an objective exist-ence which renounces all guaranteesof remaining secret: it is likewisewholly unprotected against anybodystaking notice of it. All mediatizedcommunicationsare script or textin the broadest sense, communica-

tion frozen into objective spirit thatin principle can be consulted by thirdparties. Anyone who in all sincerityputs personal outpourings on papertakes the risk of them being read byeyes for which they were not meant.Besides, textual auto-information ismobile: ego-documents can be passedon to others without the authorspermission. e veracity of verballypassed on confidences is always ques-tionable, and they can be dismissed asunreliable gossip; the personal letter,

photograph, e-mail, text message orFacebook scribble that is tossed intothe public arena, on the other hand,has an objective status: it is an incon-testable document.

Post-AuthenticityIt seems as if, with growing culturalexpediency, general affairs became evermore public, and individual affairsever more secret, stated Simmel backin . He observed the estab-lishment of themodern middle-class culture, whichcultivated both the interior of thehome and inner life. For the prototypi-cal bourgeois, the territorial interiorwas the most appropriate hothouse forthe growth of the inner psyche. epresent-day apartment individualismcontinues this culture by other means,and as a result its form is changing.Postmodern citizens do not cultivatetheir inner selves in the living capsulein semi self-seclusion but by sover-eignly connecting up with externalchannels of information. is calls for

a follow-up chapter to the story of thefall of public man as the Americansociologist Richard Sennett put it in. Sennetts public man is a roleplayer who caneffortlessly dealwith the differencebetween the social and the individualidentity, the acted role and the realself.e post-public man, by con-trast, always and everywhere strivesfor as much authenticity as possible.Which is why he or she loathes social

masks and has difficulty coping withreticence: communication must bepersonal and unaffected, sincere andinformal.e always-desired pointof flight is the confidence, the revela-tion of a personal secret to clinch theauthentic nature of a conversation.

In the name of authentic communi-cation, the personal secret changedduring the s from inner privateproperty (Simmel) into a publicgood. at stage has already passed,although the ethos of authenticity isperhaps the principle heritage of thetumultuous s. In the meanwhile,however, it became completely disas-sociated from its original utopianovertones and the urge for socialchange. e ideal of daring to speakout was also gobbled up by the neo-liberal spirit of the times: nowadays itis both a democratic right and a civicduty. Communicating transparentlybecame a must for leaders and sub-ordinates, for businesses and govern-ments. Express yourself freely. Havethe courage of your convictions, youropinions; communicate them, enrichthe community, enrich yourself, act,

enter into dialogue. Only good cancome from the use of your rightsprovided you respect those of others,wrote Jean-Franois Lyotard ironicallyin an essay in , long before blog-ging or comment-ing about newsitems on mediasites became apopular pastime.

As the ideal of transparent com-munication became generalized, thedisclosure of personal secrets gained

a different status. Nowadays, peoplewho present themselves conspicu-ously in the media, a newsgroup or onFacebook are suspect. e unasked-forpublic confidence no longer symbol-izes sincerity, but cunning. e publicconfession is seen as a form of atten-

tion seeking, a strategy of self-presen-tation aimed at irritating, shocking,causing a disturbance. Publicallycoming out with a secret immediatelybrings with it the suspicion that therevelation is also a concealment, thatthe divulged information is only asmokescreen for a deeper personalsecret of greater importance. Trans-parency as a screen for intransparency:not just the mass media but all media-tized forms of communication haveaccustomed us to this paradox. Peoplewho surf or e-mail do so in the aware-ness that they can be duped if privateinformation is voluntarily publicizedby others.

Secret ExistenceSince my earliest youth, I havebelieved that every person in this

world has his no mans land, where heis his own master. ere is the exist-ence that is apparent, and then thereis the other existence, unknown toeveryone else, that belongs to us with-out reserve. at is not to say that theone is moral and the other not, or thatthe one is permissible and the otherforbidden. Simply that each person,from time to time, escapes all control,lives in freedom and mastery, alone orwith someone else, for an hour a day,or one evening a week, or one day a

month. And that this secret and freeexistence continues from one eveningor one day to another, and the hourscontinue to go on, one after another.Such hours add something to onesvisible existence. Unless they have asignificance on their own. ey can

. Simmel, Secrecy, op.cit. (note ), .

. Ibid., .

. Richard Sennett, eFall of Public Man (Lon-don: Faber and Faber,).

. Jean-Fraois Lyotard,e General Line (forGilles Deleuze), in: Jean-Franois Lyotard, PoliticalWritings(London: UCLPress, ), .


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Open /No. /Beyond Privacy

be joy, necessity, or habit, in any casethey serve to keep ageneral line,as the Russian author and Parisianimmigrant Nina Berberova has one ofher main characters say in Le roseaurevolt.e secret and free exist-ence to which shealludes clearly isnot one of the deeds that must not seethe light of day. It is a no mans landbecause there one discovers somethingabout the self as an unknown, a per-son without fixed characteristics, aself that no longer is a subject becauseit no longer finds solid grounds forexistence in itself, but only darkness,impersonal thoughts and anonymous-seeming feelings. Nothing about thisprivate existence can be told to oth-ers. It defies communication becauseit leaves one speechless, even thoughone might, for example, pass the

time in no mans land by writing. Itshallmark is the conscious search forthe boundary with ones own uncon-scious, in the admittedly vain hope ofmaking direct contact with this Other.ose who devote themselves to thiskind of self-relation do not relinquishsecrets of the self, but themselves, andtherefore also every claim communica-tive sovereignty. Every person is alsoa secret unto themselves, and this iswhere the personal secret reaches itstrue limits.

In , the French philosopherJean-Franois Lyotard publisheda short essay dedicated to GillesDeleuze entitled e General Line,in which he provided Berberovas intu-itions with a moral-political point.He calls the no mans land in which

we give up all claim to self-determi-nation an inhuman region that liesbeyond, or beside, the law.is is asecret relation with the self becauseit is entered into in seclusion, but itsprivate nature goes beyond the rightof privacy. e latter raises a legal wallaround personal privacy from the ideathat every individual subject of thelaw by definition is the owner of itsown self. e kind of self-relation thatBerberova refers to, on the contrary,chooses a radical expropriation of thisself, its transformation in an anony-mous as well as anomic flux of brightideas, images, affects and other inten-sities. Yet this privateness is preciselywhat forms the ultimate legitimiza-tion of the right to privacy even oflaw in general: legal rules find theirultimate significance in the protec-tion of the privacy that goes beyond

every conceivable law. e silence ofthe other inside us also carries withit an ethical claim, for it wants to beheard. In an environment saturatedwith information and communica-tion possibilities, this claim is far fromevident. Now, completely occupiedwith the legitimacy of exchangeswith others in the community, weare inclined to neglect our duty tolisten to this other; we are inclined tonegate the second existence it requiresof us, according to Lyotard.ere

is nothing to add to this conclusion:it has only become more pertinentsince .

. Quoted in Lyotard,ibid., .

. Ibid., .


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18 Open 2010/No. 19/ Beyond Privacy Pastoral Power 19

There are different ways to approachthe issue of the public and the private.I would like to do so on the basisof research that I am conductinginto precariousness. The state, in itsgovernment of the poor, the unem-ployed and the clients of social serv-ices, is demolishing the separationbetween public space and private

space and between public life andprivate life as its interventions in thelife of individuals, in what is theirmost intimate, most subjective, mostsingular sphere, have become moreand more systematic.

In the first part I will analyseMichel Foucaults concept of pastoralpower, as it can help us understandhow techniques of power are usedto guide the conduct of the governedand how they affect the lives of indi-viduals beyond the separation of the

public and the private. In the secondpart I will use a playful scherzo toconsider the work of Kafka, whichdemonstrates how the administrationcrosses the line between public andprivate through its actions and howthis affects the individual and invadeshis life. Both parts are informed bythe experiences of my research intoprecariousness.

The labour market is a place wheredifferent facilities operate and hetero-geneous power relations exist. Besides

the general and universal laws enactedby parliament that, for example,define legal working hours, besidesthe regulations and norms negoti-ated by social partners employersorganizations and trade unions thatconcern collective labour agreements

as well as the modalities for unem-ployment funding and benefits of theFrench centre for work and income(Association pour lemploi dans lecommerce et lindustrie or Assedic)there is an archipelago of actualpower relations that is neither globalnor general, but local, molecular andsingular.

The individual monitoring of theunemployed, the techniques for rein-sertion of the RMIstes,1 enterprisemanagement,the coaching ofboth workersand unemployed,the generalized continuous training,the facilities for access to credit anddebt settlement, and so forth, intro-duce processes of subjection thatare different from the submissionto a law, a contract or a democratic

institution.These techniques of molecular

differentiation, individualization andsubmission, outlined or prefigured bywhat Michel Foucault calls pastoralpower, have been adjusted, modified,improved and upgraded, first in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuriesby the police of the raison dtat,and then at the end of the nineteenthand the beginning of the twentiethcenturies by the welfare state (whoseFrench name, tat providence, is

reminiscent of its religious origins),thus transforming techniques for thegovernment of souls into techniquesfor the political government of men.This genealogy allows us to specifythe molecular nature of the powereffects of liberal governmentality. It

1. A person who has nojob or unemploymentbenefits and who receivesa monthly revenue ofapproximately 400 eurosfrom the state.

Maurizio

Lazzarato

Pastoral Power

Beyond Public

and Private

The Italian-

French sociologistMaurizio Lazzarato

uses Foucaults

concept of pastoral

power to analyse

the demise of the

separation between

public and private

space. Furthermore,

his study of the

social policies

concerning unem-

ployment shows

how the produc-

tion of guilt is

more and more

often being used as

a strategy; a process

already described

by Franz Kafka in

his literature.


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also allows us to understand how thegovernment of life beyond the dividebetween public and private functions.For pastoral power or biopolitics,privacy or private life never existed,except for the rich. The only actualprivate thing in modernity is privateproperty.

Christianity, the only religion that

organized itself as a church, has givenrise to an art of conducting, directing,leading, guiding, taking in hand, andmanipulating men, an art of moni-toring them and urging them on stepby step, an art with the function oftaking charge of men collectively andindividually throughout their life andat every momentof their existence.2

This art ofgovernmentis completely

unknown in polit-ical philosophy and in the theories oflaw. This form of power, the strangestform of power, the form of power thatis most typical of the West, and thatwill also have the greatest and mostdurable fortune, which is unique . . .in the entire history of civilizations,3has no relationshipwith the Greek and Roman politicaltradition, unlike the majority ofmodern and contemporary politicalmodels.4

Pastoral powerand its modernavatars must notbe confused withthe proceduresused to submitmen to a law, a

sovereign or to democratic institu-tions. Governing, says Foucault, is notthe same as reigning or ruling, it isnot the same thing as commandingor even laying down the law. Itencompasses all the theories and prac-tices of sovereignty (of the king, theprince, the people), the theories andpractices of the arkh, in other words,

it is a political organization that isbased on the question of knowingwho is entitled to command and whois entitled to obey (the basis of theanalysis of the political by HannahArendt and Jacques Rancire), allthose juridico-democratic theoriesand practices, including most of thecurrents in Marxism that neglectgovernmental procedures of conductalthough they constitute the essenceof power relations in capitalism, espe-cially in contemporary capitalism.

Michel Foucault sums up the char-acteristics of this micropower bystressing what distinguishes each ofthem from the modern and antiquepractices and theories of macro-power. Pastoral power establishes aseries of complex, continual and para-doxical relationships between men.These relationships are not politicalin the way that democratic institu-tions, political philosophy and almostall revolutionary and critical theoriesunderstand it. Pastoral power is a

strange technologyof power treatingthe vast majorityof men as a flockwith a few asshepherds.5

Contrary to sovereignty, it is

not exercised over a territory (city,kingdom, principality or republic),but over a multiplicity in move-ment (a flock for the practices of thechurch and a population for thegovernmentality).6 Instead of touchingindividuals aslegal subjectscapable of volun-

tary actions,capable of trans-ferring right anddelegating theirpower to repre-sentatives, capableof assuming themagistracies ofthepolis, pastoralpower is aimed atliving subjects,their daily behav-iour, their subjec-

tivity and theirconscience.

The shepherd, Foucault pointsout, is essentially not a judge or aman of the law or a citizen, but adoctor. Pastoral power is a whole-some power, it takes care of boththe flock and each member of theflock. Contrary to sovereignty (orthe law) which is exercised collec-tively, pastoral power is exercised ina distributive manner (its action isdeployed from individual to indi-

vidual, step by step, and it is commu-nicated by singularities). It dealswith each soul, each situation and itsparticulars, rather than with the unitythat is formed by the whole.

Its action is local and infinitesimalrather than global and general.7

Pastoral power,like its successor,the police8 of theraison dtatandthe welfare state,deals with details,intervenes in theinfinitesimal, inthe molecular of

a situation anda subjectivity. Itis a continuous,permanent power.It is not exercisedintermittently, likethe power that isgrounded in law,sovereignty or citi-zenship (transferof rights bycontract, delega-tion of power by

vote, exercise ofmagisterial power, and so forth), butall day long during ones entire life.

Pastoral power is individual-izing. The techniques of pastoralindividualization are not based onstatus of birth or wealth, but ona subtle economy that combinesmerits and faults, their trajectoryand their circuits.9 This economy ofsouls establishes an overall depend-ency, a relation-ship of absolute

and unconditionalsubmission andobedience, not tolaws or reasonedprinciples, but tothe will of anotherindividual. Obey

2. Michel Foucault, Secu-rity, Territory, Population:Lectures at the Collgede France, 1977-78,translated by G. Burchell(Basingstoke and NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan,2007), 165.

3. Ibid., 173.

4. Foucault would havebeen doubly astonished byGiogio Agambens inter-pretation of biopolitics.First because his theoryof power is presented asa metaphysics and secondbecause he situates hisgenealogy within theRoman political tradi-tion. This is categoricallyrejected by Foucault.

6. The space in whichpastoral power is exercisedis not of the same natureas that of sovereignty and

of discipline. Whereassovereignty capitalizes aterritory and discipline isexerted in a closed spacethrough a hierarchic andfunctional distribution ofelements, pastoral power,like the police at first andthe welfare state later, isexercised over a multi-plicity in motion and onits environment. Pastoralpower, transformed froma government of soulsinto political governmentof men, will try to plan amilieu in terms of eventsor series of events orpossible elements, of seriesthat will have to be regu-lated within a multivalentand transformable frame-

work. Foucault, Security,Territory, Population, op.cit. (note 2), 34.

5. Michel Foucault,Omnes et singulatim,in: Politics, Philosophy,Culture: Interviews andOther Writings 1977-1984, edited by LawrenceD. Kritzman(New York:Routledge, 1988), 63.

7. The political govern-ment of men is not prima-rily aimed at the commongood. In the eighteenthcentury, government wasalready defined as a way ofarranging and conductingmen and things, not as acollective whole, for thecommon good (kingdom,city, republic, democracy)but for convenient ends.This implies a plurality ofparticular ends (producing

the greatest amount ofriches, population growth,and so forth); their conve r-gence, coordination andsynthesis, however, areproblematic.8. Policing consists of fur-thering both the life of thecitizens and the strengthof the state. In seeing tohealth and supplies, itdeals with the preserva-tion of life; concerningtrade, factories, workers,the poor and public order,it deals with the conven-iences of life. In seeingto the theatre, literature,entertainment, its object islifes pleasures. Foucault,Politics, Philosophy, Cul-

ture, op. cit. (note 5), 81.

9. The shepherd continu-ally manages this economyof merits that presupposes

an analysis into preciseelements, mechanisms oftransfer, procedures ofreversal, and of the inter-play of support betweenconflicting elementsbetween the shepherd andthe believer. Foucault,Security, Territory, Popula-tion, op. cit. (note 2), 228.


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because it is absurd is the motto ofChristian submission, whose rules ofmonastic life constitute the end, whilethe Greek citizen only allowed himselfto be led by law en by the rhetoric ofman, so that, according to Foucault,the general category of obediencewas unknown to the Greeks.

The shepherd is also a doctor of

the soul, who teaches modes of exist-ence. The shepherd must not confinehimself to teaching the truth, hemust also first and foremost guideconsciences by taking non-global andnon-general, specific and singularaction. Thus Saint Gregory namesup to 36 different ways of teaching,according to the individuals oneaddresses (rich, poor, married, sick,merry or sad, and so forth). Teachingdoes not pass through the enunciationof general principles, but through an

observation, a supervision, a direc-tion exercised at every moment andwith the least discontinuity possibleover the sheeps whole, total conduct.Pastoral knowledge thus produces anever-ending knowledge of the behav-iour and conduct of the membersof the flock hesupervises.10

The techniques of admission,examination of conscience, confes-sion, and so forth, are all instrumentswith which to examine and investi-

gate the relationship to the self andthe relationship with others, instru-ments that influence the affects andsensibility of each subjectivity. Theshepherd will have to account forevery act of each of his sheep, foreverything that may have happened

between them, and everything goodand evil they may have done at anytime.11

The final aim of spiritual direc-tion by pastoral power is not self-mastery, autonomy and liberty, as inancient society, but on the contrary,the renouncement of the will,humility, and the neutralization of

all individual, personal and egoisticactivities. Pastoral power is also not apower that establishes and constitutesa community of equals and peers thatis guided by the principles of equalityand liberty. It neither favours norpromotes citizens acting according tothe modalities of the republican anddemocratic tradition, but rather is asystem of generalized mutual depend-encies. The techniques of pastoralpower aim at the fabrication of asubject who is subjected to networks

that imply the general servitude ofone to all.

The assimilation and transforma-tion of these techniques of individu-alization by the police of the raisondtatin the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies did not fundamentally changeits nature. The police assures a a setof controls, decisions, and constraintsbrought to bear on men themselves,not insofar as they have a status or aresomething in the order, hierarchy, andsocial structure, but insofar as they

do something, are able to do it, andundertake to do it throughout theirlife.12

Today the economy of meritsand faults, the direction of everydayconduct and subjection are still themotor of practices and discourses that

are deemed to individualize, control,regulate and order the behaviourof those that are governed in work,schooling, health, consumption andcommunication, and so forth.

The management techniques thatextend from the enterprise to socialsecurity (the individualizing regula-tion of the unemployed, the RMIstes,

the poor) and to society in general(school, hospital, communication,consumption) are always inspired bythose molecular practices of distribu-tion of merits and faults, the produc-tion of dependency and subjection,even when dependency and subjectionare achieved, as in the case of theemployer, by activating and mobi-lizing the individuals initiative andliberty or power to act.

Pastoral power is not exercised inthe light, transparency and visibility

of public space, but in the opacity ofthe private relationship (betweenindividuals, between institution andindividual), in the dark everyday lifeof factories, schools, hospitals andsocial services. This molecular modelof power relations, which producesmultiple fractal divisions and hierar-chies that are more subtle and moremobile than those of traditionaloligarchies of wealth and birth, willcontinue to expand and grow expo-nentially under capitalism.

Individual Monitoring of theUnemployed and the RMIstes asa Technique for Pastoral ControlI will now quote a few shortextracts from interviews that we are

conducting with RMIstes and thattouch on the individual monitoring(a monthly interview) to which theyare subjected by the institutions forthe control of the poor.

The relationships that are estab-lished within the framework of indi-vidual monitoring between officialsand clients consist of the action

(of the agent) on the activity (ofthe client), with which the formeris trying to bring structure to thepossibilities for action of the latter.So it constitutes a strategic rela-tionship between two subjects inthe sense that, although it remainsasymmetrical, both official and clientare free. As Foucault would say, inother words, they can act differently.This is expressed in techniques thatare aimed at guiding the conduct ofthe clients, controlling their behav-

iour and making them enter a pre-established trajectory (project is theword that is most often used) andidentity. The techniques that are usedin individual monitoring touch onlife, intimacy and the most subjec-tive aspects of the clients of the RMI.They induce the poor to questionthemselves, their lifestyle and theirprojects. They force them to work onthemselves. In applying these tech-niques, the state and its institutionscross the boundaries between public

space and private space, betweenpublic life and private life on a dailybasis The state and its institutionsinvade the private life of individuals,act on subjectivity, mobilize the mostintimate forces, direct behaviourand use interventions (controls) that

10. Ibid.,235.

11. Ibid., 226.

12. Ibid., 419.


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overstep the limits of the home toenter into private space and initiatetrials.

D.: Skill assessments, for example,theyre offering them to you all thetime and even if you know whatthey are, theres always some aspectthat touches on the intimate. I know

people who have undergone in-depthskill assessments and in spite of thefact that they are aimed at findinga job, they are also an exercise thatnot everybody can cope with, thatyou arent necessarily used to, a kindof assessment of your life in whichyou ask yourself questions, you thinkabout yourself, its a kind of intrusionusing some horrible vocabulary thatstill forces you to look at yourself.

F.: Because I look a little young, and

I was young, actually, the relationshipthat you get often takes on the shapeof a relationship between adult andadolescent and in my case it was awoman as well I will eventually findmy way, shes just there to give meadvice, at the moment it isnt reallyworrying that I dont have a steady

job . . . Sometimes its just easier toplay along, to tell them what theywant to hear instead of being reallysincere.

In individual monitoring you areheld to account. Once every monththe clients have to talk about them-selves (or play-act), they have to tellwhat they are doing with their lifeand their time.

T.: I for one was always in a panic atthe end of the month: are they goingto strike me from the RMI, how Iam going to pay my rent this month. . . Often I would say to myself: Is itreally worth the bother? Why dont Ifind a part-time job that will pay justas much but where there wont be amillion people coming to hassle me

about accounting for myself? . . . Youdont know what theyre like, those

people from the CAF . . . Every timeyou go, you feel like youre back atschool, youre a little kid and they askHave you been behaving? and Areyou doing the right things? And yousit there and you say: Jesus, all this

just so they will give me those measly300 euros.

But individual monitoring also bringsout techniques and strategies of resist-

ance against the institutional invasionof privacy. Techniques for resistinggovernment, techniques for governingthe self and regaining mastery overones life.

The production of what econo-mists call human capital or, in otherwords, an autonomous individualwho is responsible for his employ-ability, who makes an ef fort and setsout projects in order to find a job,passes through interventions in thelife, desires, passions, opinions and

choices of the individual. Liberalrhetoric would have us believe thatdesires, opinions and choices consti-tute the private domain where thesovereign individual can act freely. Inreality, however, they are the object ofincreasingly violent public action as

unemployment rises and incrusts itselfin society as a st ructural reality.

D.: Once she asked me questionsabout what I was interested in andwhat I wanted to do with my life andwhy I had chosen to do what I haddone and I returned the question:And why are you working with the

social services? Because I thought,this is overstepping the line and Ididnt have to tell her everythingabout my life . . . I think that sheinsisted because it had to do with theidea she had of me, with her inter-

pretation of the situation; that I wassomeone who hadnt yet found hiscalling or his way and that he hasto be helped to understand what ishappening to him because I haveskills but I just have to get on theright track.

U.: I couldnt bear this type of rela-tionship where I had to justify myselfand tell my life story, so I told herabsolutely nothing she must havethought I was some kind of nut job.

L.: The counsellor asked me to talkabout what I did all day, well, I toldher: I ask myself questions aboutfidelity, it is part of my work. She saysto me: I dont see the connection. But,in my view, you just cant answer that

question, what do you do all day?Because when you start answeringthat question, you are justifying your-self, youre accounting for yourself.You shouldnt have to do that for400 euros.

But even if they want to resist suchan intrusion into their private lives,such violence perpetrated against theperson and his subjectivity, the clientsare still perturbed by the work onthe self to which they are compelledby the institutions. They start askingthemselves questions because theinterview and the questions of the

counsellor work on and find their wayinto the clients subjectivity, in spiteof themselves and in spite of their willto resist invasion by governmentalaction.

E.: I play along even when sometimesit touches on things that upset me, likefor example being confronted withstarting projects that are conceivablefor me and realistic in this context.Sometimes it brings me to the ques-tion: What is it that makes you get up

in the morning and do things? Thistype of monitoring also forces you tothink about projects that you wouldlike to work on but havent startedyet or will never start because youdont know, because its hard andit makes you ask yourself questionsabout what youre up to, about whatyour life is and which projects because this word keeps popping up

you are working on. But they dontget it, in the sense that it could affectme when they use those words. Its as

if we were not talking about the samething, but with the same words.

Institutions are not satisfied withentering into the intimate sphere ofa person, they dont limit themselvesto conducting the clients conduct


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through individual monitoring,mapping out his life, forcing himto work on his self and accessinghis innermost subjectivity. Theyphysically enter the private livesof individuals, or in other words,the incitements and prescriptions ofmonitoring can take place in thatmost private of spaces, the home.

Through their counsellors, state insti-tutions invite themselves into thehome to make inquiries and questionthe private lives of clients, applyingtwo types of control: home visits andneighbourhood inquiries. In the firstcase, an agent focuses on the client,enters into the apartment or thehouse, inspects the rooms, the bath-room, asks to see electricity, telephoneand rent bills, asks questions aboutliving arrangements and specificallyverifies if the client is living alone.

Because if he is living with someone,this person could be supporting himand his benefits could be cut.

I once was present at such a visit,because one of the techniques youcan use to defend yourself againstthis unbearable invasion of privatelife is to receive the controller witha group of people. The presence ofsomeone in your apartment or homewho is keeping tabs on your life andchecks with whom and how you liveis an exceptionally violent form of

intrusion.The state, through its officials,

invites itself into the private lives ofindividuals and even inquires abouttheir love life. The following exchangewith RMIste artists (visual artists,composers, filmmakers), recorded in

one of our research localities, clearlydemonstrates how the state shame-lessly intervenes in what liberal andeven state ideologies consider to bethe most private aspect of the life ofindividuals: in their love relationships.

About the rent . . . something youmight call the RMI and love

[laughter]. At a certain moment we,my ex-girlfriend and I, decided torent an apartment. I knew I wasentitled to benefits from the RMI.And I filled in a simulation form onthe site of the CAF (the institutionthat decides on the allocation of theRMI) by checking the RMI. And thesimulation form answered: Yes, youare entitled to benefits from 300 to400 euros a month. Knowing that my

girlfriend was making a good livingand that I was earning whatever I was

earning. But she didnt support me,I paid for my own food, we agreedthat I would pay a small part of therent, according to what I earned. Welived as a couple, but for the rest . . .In short, we finally were able to signthe lease because she could put downa great deposit. But in the end, theCAF would not grant me the benefits,because they considered us to be asingle household and they look atthe incomes of both partners. In fact,from the moment we registered at

the same address, they said yourea couple, so we look at the couplesincome.

M.: You didnt get it for how long?

To.: During the two years we livedtogether, and immediately after weseparated, I got it back.

S.: Its like a premium on divorce.

To.: In the letter I wrote to the CAF, Isaid: I know that the CAF isnt thereto play Cupid, but still . . . [laughter]

P.: So the RMIstes should only asso-ciate with RMIstes if they want to getsupport. Its the Indian system, thecaste system: the rich with the rich,the poor with the poor [laughter].

What interests me most in thefollowing excerpt from an articleon home visits13in which theRMI and lovestill plays a

role is a remarkthat was madealmost in passing.The consulta-tion betweencontroller14 andcontrolled is likea trial (antici-pating the finalpart on Kafka),but a very strangetrial, becauseit takes place

within the wallsof the home ofthe accused, thesuspect, who isguilty of cohabi-tation (he failedto report that he

is living with someone who might beable to support him).

There are only two chairs. So heremains standing in front of us onthe other side of the table, so thatthe whole scene takes on the aspectof a trial, especially because he talksa lot to explain and clarify his situa-

tion. He is visibly tense, his voice israther shaky. The controller asks fora number of documents and iden-tity papers. Somewhat abruptly andwith a natural air he asks about thenature of the housing situation. Theclient immediately answers: Yeah,were living together. The rest of themeeting regards the qualification ofthat situation.

The man: Cohabitation, I have noidea . . . We have separate accounts,we pay for things separately. I came

to live here because I didnt have aplace to stay, but I didnt see myselfas . . . In the beginning, for me, it wastemporary. You mustnt get the ideathat we were trying to cheat.

The controller: No, if they senda controller, its to look at the situ-ation, not because we think youvebeen cheating. We look at the facts.So here, in the beginning this wastemporary, and now its a temporaryarrangement that is lasting . . . [Thecontroller asks for the date that they

started living together].The man, after a few moments

of silence: And do you take this intoaccount in your calculation of thebenefits?

The controller: Yes.

13. Vincent Dubois, Leparadoxe du contrleur. In-certitude et contrainte insti-tutionnelle dans le contrledes assists sociaux, Actesde la recherche en sciences

socials, vol. 3 (2009) no.178.

14. There are differentcontrol techniques: Me,I have my own personalworking method. For ex-ample, I give the client theimpression that I am goingnowhere. But actually myinterview is pre-established.So I talk about his situationand his work and then Isay sorry, I forgot some-thing. But in fact, Imtrying to rattle him or her.Or I close my briefcase andpretend to leave and thencome back to ask the ques-tion that Id supposedlyforgotten, but that I had inthe back of my mind from

the start. Well, then I tryto rattle him a bit becausesome of them are prepared.There are already threecontrols in the file, so theyknow the drill. I try to .. . throw them off a bit,because some of them evenprepare what theyre goingto say, theyve been briefedby a social worker. Ibid.


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The second type of state controlconsists of talking to the neighboursand asking them if the client reallylives alone en what his lifestyle is. Ifhe turns out to be a single parent, theneighbours are asked if he is reallysingle, and so forth. . . . The institu-tions for the control of the poor trainthe controllers to answer criticisms

and eventual complaints by clients.Here we have a list of argumentsintended for the senior staff thattrains the controllers. It attempts toprepare for any objections, refusalsand criticisms that the clients mightexpress during visits. A few words ofadvice to the controllers:

When methods of control on locationare put into question

Answer: The control that youmention, which we call on location,

is only one control method amongmany that we use in certain cases.Among the 6 million clients whom wecontrol each year, we only use it in 10

per cent of all cases.

In the case of a critical remark likeincursion into the private home,neighbourhood inquiry = grassingyou must answer: if the controllershave reason to visit the home of theclient or to conduct a neighbour-hood inquiry, it is in fact because

they cannot base the conclusion oftheir inquiry on a single element (theopinion of a neighbour or the wordof a client).

Every day television and radio enteryour home, blurring the bounda-

ries between private and public andredefining the limits of both publicand private space. But these are stillexternal devices that you can easilyavoid. Physical intrusion into privatespace deeply destabilizes individualsby humiliating them.

The new French legislation (2009)that has replaced the RMI is even

more invasive. Not only do you haveto disclose your actual resources (ifyou have had ajob or if you havean income), butalso your bankbalance, whetheryou have life insur-ance, whether youbought shareswhen you had ajob, whether youare a house owner,

whether yourparents or friendscan help you, andso forth. The stateconducts an actualinquiry into your lifestyle. The clientmust be completely transparent15 tothe logic of the institution.

Now I would like to quote a few shortextracts from a round table discussionthat we have held with agents of theunemployment insurance programme

and of the management of the RMIwho intervene in the monitoring andcontrol of the unemployed and thepoor. These extracts will serve as anintroduction to the last part whichbears on the production of responsi-bility and guilt with the recipients of

unemployment insurance and of theRMI.

M.: In my work, what the logic ofreinsertion teaches me, contrary to thelogic of integration, is to act on the

person. In other words, its the personwho must qualify himself and enterinto a process in order to raise his

level. And thats the real problem withstructural unemployment, becauseyou have to put the responsibilitywith the individuals: they are the oneswho arent capable of finding a joband in that case social work consistsof acting directly on the person. Andwhen the work of the ANPE connectswith the work of the externaleducator, it is within this logic. Itdefines our practices: we already thinkin advance that the persons them-selves have to increase their skills.

A.: At Ple emploi, the employ-ment and benefits agency, that iswhat we propagate, we make theclient responsible for his situation.That is it, really. And in the face ofwhat happens, its the generalizationof a badly assumed or completelyassumed feeling of complicity andthe managing of a form of everyday

powerlessness that breeds resistances,but managed on an individual level.Because the counsellor at the other

side of the table is also held respon-sible for his capacity or incapacity inmaking the client employable.

Kafka, the Production of Guiltand the Blurring of the Divisionbetween Public and Private

The Workmens Accident Insur-ance Institution . . . is a crea-tion of the labour movement. Itshould therefore be filled withthe radiant spirit of progress. But

what happens? The institutionis a dark nest of bureaucrats, inwhich I function as the solitarydisplay-Jew.

The production of guilt is a strategicaction of neoliberalism that can alsobe analysed through Kafkas work.Kafka was very much ahead of histime, for his characters speak about areality, a form of labour organizationand public administration (the welfarestate) and a life that seems closer to

our times than that of the interbellum.Brgel, the connecting secre-

tary in The Castle, says somethingthat sounds familiar to us: In thatrespect we dont acknowledge anydistinction between ordinary timeand work time. Such distinctionsare alien to us. And K., the landsurveyor in The Castle, experiencesa power relation that could be quali-fied, on the basis of Foucaults terms,as biopolitical, in the sense that itimplicates life as a whole, beyond the

separation of public life and privatelife: Nowhere else had K. ever seenones official position and ones lifeso intertwined as they were here, sointertwined that it sometimes seemedas though office and life had switchedplaces.

15. Transparant, but notin the figurative sense.Undressing is not a meta-phor. A controller: Someof them will say to me:[with a whining voice]Oh, Im sick . . . Thenthey start undressing, theyshow me their scars. ThenI say with a friendly voice:No, no, you can put yourclothes back on, Im not adoctor. Some say theyresick, they hope that I willnot ask too many ques-tions or ask them for theirpapers. Some say: Ohdear I dont know where

my head is, you see, youmustnt ask me too manyquestions, Ive been ill, orIve got cancer. Thatsthe thing I fear the most.Each time I tell them:Listen, Im very sorry,but . . . Ibid.


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Official administration institutionslike the RMI, unemployment insur-ance, and so forth, already announcesomething before they articulatea discourse, whatever it may be.They announce that there is a socialproblem (unemployment, employ-ability, and so forth) but it is notsociety that the institution calls on

to insure the individual follow-up, itis you, Joseph K.! There is a shiftfrom there is a social problem toyou are the problem! This shift isenclosed in the institution itself, in itspractices and its procedures, beforeit enters the minds of social workersand clients.

Like in The Trial, the accusation isnever clearly formulated: it is neverclearly stated that being unemployedis your own fault, for that would leadto resistance on the part of the client.

As for the fault of unemployment, ithas unclear, undefined and impreciseboundaries. But very soon you forgetthat the accusation is more thanvague. Slowly it installs doubt into themind of the client, there is a growingfeeling that we are guilty of some-thing, that we are at fault, because wehave received a document, we havebeen summoned and must presentourselves at that address on that dayat that time in that office. Joseph K.sarrest does not really change his life,

he continues to go to work and tolive as before. He is thus both underarrest and free. Whether youre guiltyor innocent, Were opening a file onyou, Joseph K.!

Somewhere there is a file withofficials who are working on it, but

all you will ever see are the flunkeys,never the main procurators. On theother hand, is there really a verticalorganization of offices, with chiefsand subordinates, or does every-thing happen in a horizontal manner,between subalterns? Rather both atthe same time, but anyway, the rightinformation is always to be found in

the next office, you always have toknock on the next door, and so on.Are the offices of the administrationstill part of public space or have theybeen installed in our private space?

The number 3949 is a telephoneplatform for the unemployed and thepoor that replaces face-to-face meet-ings with institution agents. It is thecontemporary version of the officethat is no longer situated in eitherprivate or public space. The number3949 must be dialled repeatedly

before you fall on different officialsand verify if the same law is beingapplied because everyone has hisown interpretation of it. Often theofficials dont even know about it,and anyway, they hang up after sixminutes. You then have to knock onthe next door, and so on. The number3949 is the deterritorialization of theoffice and the official.

Like the accusation, the tribunalsin The Trialhave no clearly definedlimits (You shouldnt imagine these

barriers as a fixed boundary, saysBarnabas in The Castle). They arespread out over the city and no-onereally knows what they are made upof. There is no clearly establisheddistinction between public space andprivate space, the two continually

overlap and form a continuity thatleaves no room for private life.

I find that Kafkas law is more inkeeping with social law and socialsecurity regulations, and so forth, thanwith penal law: social security laws arerelatively malleable, continually prolif-erating and permanently expanding.Of the three types of acquittal,

actual acquittal (no-one can influ-ence it), apparent acquittal (demandsa concentrated effort over a limitedperiod) and protraction of theproceedings (demands a more modestbut interminable effort), it is thelatter that concerns us most. Actualacquittal exists only theoretically.Apparent acquittal is derived fromdisciplinary societies in which you gofrom one internment to the next andfrom one guilt to the other: from thefamily to school, from school to the

army, from the army to the factory,and so forth. And each passage ismarked by a judgement or an evalu-ation. You go from one acquittal:you are no longer a child, you are nolonger a pupil, and so forth, to thenext trial and another file: you are asoldier, you are a worker, you are apensioner, and so forth.

Unlimited protraction, however,maintains the trial in its first phasefor an indeterminable period, in otherwords, in a situation where you are

dependent on the presumption ofinnocence and guilt (you are on trial:you have been summoned and youhave a file). In unlimited protraction,the sentence of guilty or innocentnever comes. The state of suspensionbetween innocence and guilt forces

you to be mobilized, disposable andon your toes at all times.

Unlimited protraction demandseven greater attention, a more modestbut interminable effort, says thepainter Titorelli or, in other words,a greater subjective involvement.The law has no interiority, the law isempty (the law is pure form), for it

is you, Joseph K., who, if all goeswell, must contribute to its construc-tion and to the construction of yoursentence by working on your file andyour summons.

The monitoring relationship thatis woven on a framework of guilt is atrial in which you have to play alongwhile withdrawing at the same time.You have to anticipate developments,twists and turns and bumps in theroad, even if you do not really believein them (cynicism of both officials and

clients). Anyway, your subjectivity issummoned and becomes implicated. Itworks, thinks, hesitates and questionsitself, even against your better judge-ment. The indefinite prolongation ofthe first phase in the trial also requiresendless monitoring that goes beyondthe boundaries of public and private.The timetable of the accused and thatof the monitoring are adjusted to oneanother.

The interrogations, for instance,theyre only very short, if you ever

dont have the time or dont feel likegoing to them you can offer an excuse,with some judges you can even arrangethe injunctions together a long time inadvance, in essence all it means is that,as the accused, you have to report tothe judge from time to time.


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32 Open 2010/No. 19/ Beyond Privacy

Like in The Trial, being accused is nowalk in the park. It is work, you haveto keep an eye on your file, spenda lot of time on it (the industrialspends all his time and money on hisdefence).

You have to stay abreast of thedevelopment of the law and itschanges and be aware of its subtle-

ties. You have to hoist yourself tothe same level of knowledge as theofficials and even surpass them. TheRMIstes prepare their meetings, theirconfrontations with the institutionby elaborating certain tactics. Theyrefine projects that are more or lessfictional. They all operate by directlyor indirectly supplying clues andinformation, they all function on thefeedback from the institution.

In disciplinary societies, penal lawwas legitimized by the battle against

illegalisms (transgressions of the law)and by social peace, but in reality,instead of eliminating these illegal-isms, it has in turn produced anddifferentiated crimes and criminals.Similarly, social law in societies ofcontrol has been legitimized by thestruggle against unemployment andfor full employment, but all it hasdone is invent, multiply and differen-tiate countless ways of not workingfull-time. Social law, like penal law,has not failed, but fully succeeded. It

has constructed a new dimension inwhich the distinction between privateand public no longer exists.


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Open /No. /Beyond Privacy e Meaning and Value of Privacy

Our privacy is under assault. Busi-nesses are collecting an unprec-edented amount of personal data,recording the items we buy at thesupermarket, the books we buyonline, our web surfing activity, ourfinancial transactions, the movies wewatch, the videos we rent, and muchmore. Nearly every organization

and company we interact with nowhas tons of personal data about us.Companies weve never heard of alsopossess profiles of us. Digital dossiersabout our lives and personalities arebeing assembled in distant databases,and they are being meticulously stud-ied and analysed to make judgmentsabout us: What products are we likelyto buy? Are we a good credit risk?What price would we be willing topay for certain items? How good of acustomer are we? Are we likely to be

cooperative and not likely to returnitems or complain or call customerservice?

Today, government has an unprec-edented hunger for personal data. Itis tapping into the data possessed bybusinesses and other organizations,including libraries. Many businessesreadily comply with governmentrequests for data. Government agen-cies are mining this personal data,trying to determine whether a personmight likely engage in criminal or

terrorist activity in the future basedon patterns of behaviour, purchasesand interests. If a government com-puter decides that you are a likelythreat, then you might find yourselfon a watch list,you might have

difficulty flying, and there might befurther negative consequences in thefuture.e threat to privacy involves more

than just records. Surveillance cam-eras are popping up everywhere. It isgetting increasingly harder to have anunrecorded moment in public. In theUSA, the National Security Agency

is engaging in massive telephonesurveillance. In the UK, millions ofCCTV cameras monitor nearly everynook and cranny of public space.At work, manyemployers monitornearly everything every call theiremployees make, every keystroke theytype, every website they visit.

Beyond the government and busi-nesses, were increasingly invadingeach others privacy and exposing

our own personal information.egeneration of young people growingup today are using blogs and socialnetwork websites at an unprecedentedrate, spilling intimate details abouttheir personal lives online that areavailable for anybody anywhere inthe world to read.e gossip thatcirculates in highschool and col-lege is no longerephemeral andfleeting it is now permanently avail-

able on the Internet, and it can readilybe accessed by doing a Google searchunder a persons name.

With all these developments,many are asking whether privacy isstill alive. With so much informationbeing gathered, with so much surveil-

. Robert OHarrow,NoPlace to Hide(New York:Free Press, )

Daniel J. Solove

e Meaning and

Value of Privacy

Appeal for a

Pluralistic

Definition of the

Concept of Privacy

According to DanielSolove, professor oflaw at WashingtonUniversity LawSchool, we need

to reconsider theconcept of privacy.He appeals for a

more pluralisticreading of theconcept, to facilitatethe recognition ofproblems pertainingto privacy. In hismost recent publica-tion UnderstandingPrivacy, he hasdeveloped a frame-

work for this. In

the following articlehe discussesthe ideas unfoldedin the book.

. Jeffrey Rosen,e NakedCrowd: Reclaiming Securityand Freedom in an Anxious

Age(New York: RandomHouse, ).

. Daniel J. Solove, eFuture of Reputation: Gossip,Rumor, and Privacy on the

Internet(New Haven: YaleUniversity Press,).

. Daniel J. Solove,Understanding Privacy(Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, ).More information aboutthis book can be foundonline at: understanding-privacy.com.


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lance, with so much disclosure, howcan people expect privacy anymore? Ifwe cant expect privacy, is it possible toprotect it? Many contend that fight-ing for privacy is a losing battle, so wemight as well just grin and bear it.

Do People Expect Privacy Anymore?

ese attitudes, however, representa failure to understand what privacyis all about.e law often focuseson whether we expect privacy or not and it refuses to protect privacyin situations where we dont expectit. But expectations are the wrongthing to look at.e law isnt merelyabout preserving the existing state ofaffairs it is about shaping the future.e law should protect privacy notbecause we expect it, but because wedesire it.

Privacy is often understood nar-rowly, and these restrictive conceptslead to people neglecting to recognizeprivacy harms. For example, it maybe true that many businesses hold alot of personal data about you. Doesthis mean you lack a privacy interestin that data?ose who view privacynarrowly as keeping informationtotally secret might say that you nolonger have privacy in informationthat others possess.

But privacy is about much more

than keeping secrets. It is also aboutconfidentiality data can be knownby others, yet we have social normsabout maintaining that informationin confidence. For example, althoughlibrarians know information aboutthe books we read, they understand

that they have an obligation to keepthe information confidential. Doc-tors know our medical information,but they, too, are under a duty ofconfidentiality.

Privacy also involves maintain-ing data security.ose who possessdata should have an obligation tokeep it secure and out of the hands of

identity thieves and fraudsters.eyshould have an obligation to preventdata leaks.

Another dimension of privacy ishaving control over our information.Just because companies and the gov-ernment have data about you doesntmean that they should be allowed touse it however they desire. We canreadily agree that they shouldnt beable to use personal information toengage in discrimination.e law canand should impose many other limits

on the kinds of decisions that can bemade using personal data.ose that use data about us

should have the responsibility of noti-fying us about the data they have andhow they plan to use i t. People shouldhave some say in how their informa-tion is used.ere needs to be betterdata due process. Currently, innocentpeople are finding themselves on ter-rorist watch lists and with no recourseto challenge their inclusion on thelist. Financial and employment deci-

sions are made about people based onprofiles and information they donteven know exist.

Privacy thus involves more thankeeping secrets it is about how weregulate information flow, how weensure that others use our informa-

tion responsibly, how we exercisecontrol over our information, how weshould limit the way others can useour data.

Some argue that it is impossiblefor the law to limit how others use ourdata, but this is false. Copyright lawis a clear example of the law regulat-ing the way information is used and

providing control over that data. Imnot suggesting that copyright law isthe answer to privac y, but it illustratesthat it is possible for the law to restrictuses of data if it wants to.

We can protect privacy, even inlight of all the collection, dissemina-tion and use of our information. Andit is something we must do i f we wantto protect our freedom and intellec-tual activity in the future. But how?e first steps involve rethinking theconcept and value of privacy.

Rethinking the Concept of PrivacyPrivacy is a concept in disarray.Commentators have lamented thatthe concept of privacy is so vaguethat it is practically useless. When wespeak of privacy invasions, we oftenfail to clearly explain why such aninfringement is harmful.e inter-ests on the other side free speech,efficient consumer transactions, andsecurity are often much more read-

ily comprehended.e result is thatprivacy frequently loses in the bal-ance. Even worse, courts and policy-makers often fail to recognize privacyinterests at all.

Many attempts to conceptual-ize privacy do so by attempting to

locate the common denominator forall things we view as private.ismethod of conceptualizing privacy,however, faces a difficult dilemma. Ifwe choose a common denominatorthat is broad enough to encompassnearly everything, then the concep-tion risks the danger of being over-inclusive or too vague. If we choose a

narrower common denominator, thenthe risk is that the conception is toorestrictive.ere is a way out of this dilemma:

We can conceptualize privacy in a dif-ferent way.e philosopher LudwigWittgenstein argued that some con-cepts are best understood as familyresemblances they include thingsthat are relatedto one another inmany different ways. Some thingsshare a network ofsimilarities with-

out one particularthing in common.ey are related in the way familymembers are related. You might haveyour mothers eyes, your brothers hair,your sisters nose but you all mightnot have one common feature.ereis no common denominator. Never-theless, you bear a resemblance to eachother. We shouldunderstand privacyin this way. Privacyis not one thing,

but a plurality ofmany distinct yetrelated things.

One of the key issues in developinga theory of privacy is how to deal withthe variability of attitudes and beliefsabout privacy. Privacy is a product of

. Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations,translated by G.E.M. Ans-

combe (Oxford: Blackwell, []), .

. As Wittgensteinobserves, instead of beingrelated by a commondenominator, some thingsshare a complicated net-work of similarities over-lapping and criss-crossing:

sometimes overall similari-ties, sometimes similaritiesof detail. Ibid., .


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norms, activities, and legal protec-tions. As a result, it is culturally andhistorically contingent. For example,it is widely accepted today that thenaked body is private in the sense thatit is generally concealed. But that wasfar from the case in ancient Greeceand Rome. At the gymnasium inancient Greece, people exercised in

the nude. In ancient Rome, men andwomen would bathe naked together.In the MiddleAges, peoplebathed in front ofothers and duringsocial gatherings.Norms aboutnudity, bathingand concealing bodily functions havevaried throughout history and in dif-ferent cultures. Likewise, althoughthe home has long been viewed as a

private space, in the past it was privatein a different way than it is now. Untilthe seventeenth century, many homesmerely consisted of one large roomwhere there was scant seclusion forprivate activities such as sex and inti-macy. A married couple would oftensleep in the same bed as their chil-dren, and would share it with houseg-uests. Like the body, the home is notinherently private at least not in thesame way we view

it as private today.Many theories of privacy focus onthe nature of the information or mat-ter involved.ey seek to identify var-ious types of information and mattersthat are private. But as I illustratedwith the body and the home, no par-

ticular kind of information

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Open 19 - Beyond Privacy