This Obscure Thing Called Transparency

Emmanuel Alloa is professor of aesthetics and philosophy of art at the Philosophy Department of the University of Fribourg.

This Obscure Thing Called Transparency is a timely, wide-ranging, and innovative collection of essays on the metaphorical opacities of 'transparency' from the modern period to the current pandemic crisis. [...] Focused on heterogeneous and illuminating case studies of transparency - from modernist architecture to Wikileaks, shop windows to digital screens, painting to film, new media to the Covid-19 pandemic, among other perspectives - this volume casts a new, informed, and revealing light on the political and aesthetic paradoxes of transparency in the contemporary age.Nidesh Lawtoo, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie: Louvain Journal of Philosophy 84 (2022), nr. 2

• 1. “SEEING THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY”The Transparency Paradox Emmanuel AlloaPART I - POLITICS2. IN DEFENSE OF TRANSPARENCY Philippe Van Parijs3. THE USES AND ABUSES OF TRANSPARENCYDavid Heald4. THE POLITICAL IMPERATIVE OF TRANSPARENCYIts Grounds and Limits Dorota Mokrosinska5. FEED State Transparency amidst Informational Surplus Mark Fenster6. ALGORITHMIC TRANSPARENCY On the Rise of a New Normative Ideal and Its Silenced Performative Implications Loup Cellard7. TRANSPARENCY, PUBLICITY, SECRECY AND MENDACITY Four Shades of Political Visibility John Pitseys8. WHY TRANSPARENCY HAS LITTLE (IF ANYTHING) TO DO WITH THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Emmanuel Alloa9. THE CONFESSING ANIMAL Foucault and Christianity Patrick VandermeerschPART II - AESTHETICS10. COMMUNICATION, MANIPULATION, SEDUCTIONThe Pragmatics of TransparencyHerman Parret11. TRANSPARENCY AND OBSTACLE IN ARCHITECTURE From Le Corbusier to Rem KoolhaasChristophe Van Gerrewey12. TROPPO VERO!Opacity, Density, Noise and Thickness of Images Vlad Ionescu13. THE LAYERED IMAGE Transparency, Time and Memory in Proust Sara Guindani14. WITH HIDDEN NOISE The Rattle of Marcel Duchamp Bart Verschaffel15. THROUGH THE WINDOW OR BEYOND THE MIRROR The Phantasmagorias of Transparency and Reflexiveness in Film Natacha Pfeiffer16. MESSAGES ON GLASS Transparency in Times of COVID-19Riccardo DonatiNOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS