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Adrian May
To cite this article: Adrian May (2015) Transparency, Opacity, and Exposuremichel Surya,
Lignes, and Intellectual Responses to Financial Crises, Contemporary French and Francophone
Studies, 19:5, 515-523, DOI: 10.1080/17409292.2015.1092235
Article views: 15
Adrian May
ABSTRACT Through the contemporary intellectual review Lignes, this article charts the
responses to neoliberalism and crisis of Michel Surya, Frederic Lordon, and Frederic
Neyrat. In the mid-1990s Surya critiques discourses of transparency which attempt to
morally justify financial capitalism. The economist Lordon corroborates Suryas account of
the cynical use of transparency within financial milieus, noting that the markets wealth
is generated by opacity. Yet Suryas account spreads beyond the financial sector,
suggesting that the demand for transparency creates a generalized atmosphere of
surveillance and ostentation, implying that an opaque withdrawal from the public sphere
is a mode of resistance. Also publishing in Lignes, Neyrat moves beyond the potentially
sterile binary of transparency and opacity to suggest exposure as a mediating term
measuring both degrees of appearance and disappearance, and the exposure of individuals
to concrete threats such as debt, harm, surveillance, and expulsion. Such conceptual texts
are anchored in comparisons to UK Uncut, Occupy, le comite invisible and the black
bloc.
By the late 1980s in France, Marxist and structuralist thought had been margin-
alized, and the definitive move of the Parti Socialiste (PS) towards neoliberal
economics had disorientated the left. Created in 1987, the intellectual review
Lignes1 therefore initially adopted a relatively defensive position, emphasizing
the continued relevance of French Theory and decrying the emergence of the
Front National (FN) and neo-racism.1 In the mid-1990s, however, the reviews
orientation notably shifts. Ligness principal editor, Michel Surya, began to ques-
tion whether lextr^eme droite navait jamais servi que de trompe-lil aux
processus que la domination mettait alors en place pour devenir sans partage
[the extreme-right had only ever served as a screen to mask the new processes
installed by domination to become uncontested] (Reconstitution 30). Whilst
the FN remained a concern, the review turned its attention towards the globali-
zation of neoliberalism, Surya stressing the ostentatious emphasis on
transparency through which capitalism asserted its moral authority. From
1994, alongside the new wave of social movements that re-politicized the
French left, Lignes attempted to take greater stock of the impact of financial capi-
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financial sector could as a whole seem innocent. The few ministers and CEOs
found guilty in the affaires were the price that capital was willing to pay to
appear moral, rendering its hegemony free of all suspicion. For Surya, this is a
means to ideologically legitimate the neoliberal liquidation of political sover-
eignty: by occupying the moral terrain of demonstrably good behavior through
transparency, the political debate is elided. Capitalism itself is rarely critiqued,
with public debates instead emphasizing compliance and regulation, an internal
policing operation which the financial institutions themselves take responsibility
for.
Surya sees this as a danger to democracy itself, as capital pays lip-service to
democratic principles whilst rapidly making itself unaccountable to the popu-
lace. Surya worries about France in particular, where the mass media and judi-
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ciary are based in one small Parisian district adjacent to the economic and
political centers, subsequently becoming imbricated with vested interests and
no longer functioning as a counter-power. The financial markets were increas-
ingly portrayed as essential to the smooth functioning of European states, and
therefore often conflated with the concept of democracy itself. For Surya, when
people talk about democracy, they often actually mean capitalism: consequently,
cest au nom de la democratie quon liquidera la democratie [it is in
democracys name that democracy is liquidated] (27). This is a common theme
throughout Lignes, especially since technocratic governments were installed in
Italy and Greece after the 2007 financial crisis. These recent events suggest the
prescience of Suryas analysis, both in terms of the subsequently increasing
recourse to transparency within the media and institutions, and the problems
that supporting financial capitalism at all costs can lead to. Although first pub-
lished in 1996 in response to French scandals, Suryas text has now acquired a
more global relevance.
A technical knowledge of the intricate functioning of international economic
exchange was largely absent from early issues of Lignes, however, and the review
began to search for contributors to shore up this gap in its knowledge. Frederic
Lordon, an economist for Le Monde diplomatique who was also associated with
Les Economistes atterres,2 took up Suryas critique of transparency in the years
that followed, and recently began contributing to Lignes.
As Lordon notes, following the Asian financial crisis, which began in Thai-
land in the summer of 1997 yet posed a threat to global markets, Lionel Jopsin
created the Conseil dAnalyse E conomique to advise the government in such cir-
cumstances, bringing together academics and policy makers to shape future
responses. Olivier Davannes inaugural report, entitled Instabilite du systeme
financier international, recommended greater western surveillance of developing
economies, blaming the opacity of foreign markets (notably Asian) for the crisis.
Whilst predicting that the serious crises of the twenty-first century would prob-
ably erupt from within Europe and America, Davanne advised that better super-
vision of banks, and greater institutional transparency, should be enough to
518 CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES
mitigate the effects of such events (9). Progressive measures, such as the institu-
tion of a Tobin tax or deeper financial restructuring, were rejected. Lordon
goes on to demonstrate that, by 1999, the call for greater transparency had
become unanimous in international financial circlesand yet, he argues, such
calls yielded few tangible results (Finance internationale 7). Whilst firms such
as Enron and Worldcom were indeed publicly excoriated as bad apples, general
financial structures remained unchanged, bad practice remained rife and the
eventual financial crisis struck in 2007. Sarkozys response was, as ever,
lincrevable appel a la transparence [the indomitable call for transparency]
(Comment proteger leconomie reelle).
Suryas critique of transparency operated on two levels, firstly as a legitima-
tion of the status-quo which risked driving Europe towards financial collapse.
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detention policies, such as the use of quasi-legal retention centers. For Surya,
these two trends coalesce into an intensifying web of social domination resem-
bling a Foucauldian Panopticon (60).
In response, opacity becomes a privileged site of resistance. Surprisingly,
Jean Baudrillard was a key influenceyet not the Baudrillard influenced by Guy
Debord who emphasized the glossy joys of the surface and simulacra. In 1990,
this Baudrillard claimed that la sphere des capitaux flottants et speculatifs est
tellement autonomisee que ses convulsions m^emes ne laissent pas de traces [the
floating sphere of speculative capital is now so automatized that its convulsions
no longer leave any traces] (27). The suggestion that virtualized, speculative
financial transactions could no longer tangibly affect daily life can only seem
nave today. There is, however, a more Bataillian Baudrillard, one interested in
the play of appearance and disappearance and for whom opacity was key: as
Olivier Jacquemond summarizes, pour vivre heureux, vivons caches [to live
happy, we live hidden] (83). This Baudrillard privileges intimacy, secrecy, and
the intangibility of social bodies. Lignes issue 38 (November 1999) subsequently
undertook a critique of sociology via Baudrillard: in trying to render efferves-
cent social rapports transparently definable, sociology does violence to the opa-
que social fabric. Opacity is privileged as a means of resisting the invasive
processes of classification and normalization which, for Surya, were exacerbated
by discourses of transparency.
Since the turn of the millennium strategies of opaque presentation, or com-
plete withdrawal, have been attempted. In France the milieu surrounding the
revue Tiqqunthe comite invisibleattempted to form separatist communes
whilst publishing anonymous threats to the reigning order such as LInsurrection
qui vient. More internationally, the black bloc are a frequent presence at global
summits, the name alluding to the desire for collective opacity, a will not to
appear and to materialize affects that are increasingly hard to take (Fontaine).
However, in an ever-more securitized globe since the attacks on the World
Trade Centre, the black blocs violent protests are easily recuperated into dis-
courses of counter-terrorism and the moral de-legitimation of violence; and
520 CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES
despite their desire for opacity, the comite invisible were rendered spectacularly
present in November 2008 as 150 heavily armed officers stormed the village of
Tarnac to arrest nine of its members, ostensibly for sabotaging a railway line.
Strategies of opacity at best tend towards an exilic quietism, and at worst are
violently drawn back into the realm of appearance. Furthermore, such a binary
response also seems inadequate in the financial sector: the cynical deployment
of transparency to legitimate financial capitalism is dubious, yet many of the
nefarious effects of the market really derive from its necessary opacity.
The resort to opacity in the face of a perceived, all pervasive desire for
transparency often relies on an overly totalizing account of political domination.
Despite sharing Suryas suspicion of transparency, Daniel Bensad was one Lignes
contributor who criticized his account of political domination for being far too
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more intimate spaces through the reflux du monde sur le monde [reflux of the
world back onto the world] (20). For Neyrat such an intensification has created
a generalized tort bio-politique mondial [global bio-political threat] in which
there is not just a precarisation generalisee des conditions de vie [greater pre-
cariousness in the general conditions of life], but a precarisation de la vie elle-
m^eme [precariousness which becomes inherent to life itself] due to the variety
of exacerbated risks populations are exposed to under neoliberal globalization
(209).
However, Neyrat goes on to argue that there is a danger with this notion of
exposition, especially regarding a potential environmental collapse. Such dis-
courses tend to create a sense of urgency, demanding unity in the face of a com-
mon problem and eradicating class distinctions and other internal tensions:
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nothing to others, Occupy hope to educate the population regarding the opaque
nature of their financial servitude.
From Lignes to Occupy, these examples demonstrate a growing awareness
of the need to comprehend the complex structures of financial institutions to
better reformulate a leftist response. Suryas account of totalizing domination
can be tempered by Neyrats differing levels of exposure, just as Lordons eco-
nomic insights prompted his entry into Lignes after the financial crisis. Whilst
Lordon troubled the binary between opacity and transparency, through expo-
sure Neyrat mediates between the two, providing a sharper analysis of global
politics which also allows for potential agency rather than withdrawal. This shift
from transparency, through opacity to exposure has led to a more nuanced
account of the risks we are all, differently, exposed to.
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Notes
1. For more on Lignes, see my forthcoming publication, Adrian May, From
Bataille to Badiou: Lignes, an Intellectual Review into the Twenty-First Century.
Liverpool: Liverpool U P, 2016.
2. See website: http://atterres.org.
3. See website: http://www.ukuncut.org.uk.
4. See website: http://rollingjubilee.org
Works cited
Baudrillard, Jean. La Transparence du mal: essai sur les phenomenes extr^emes. Paris: Gali-
lee, 1990.
Bensad, Daniel. Le Spectacle, stade ultime du fetichisme de la marchandise. Marx, Marcuse,
Debord, Lefebvre, Baudrillard, etc. Fecamp: Nouvelles E ditions Lignes, 2011.
Celestin, Roger and Eliane DalMolin. France from 1851 to the Present: Universalism in
Crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.
Comite invisible. LInsurrection qui vient. Paris: La Fabrique, 2009.
Davanne, Olivier. Instabilite du systeme financier international. Paris: La Documenta-
tion francaise, 1998.
Fontaine, Claire. This is Not the Black Bloc. 4 October 2014. http://www.claire
fontaine.ws/pdf/black_bloc_eng.pdf
Groys, Boris. Perestroika, glasnost et post-modernisme. Trans. Jacqueline Lahana.
Lignes 1 (1987): 34 43.
Jacquemond, Olivier. Baudrillard ou la mystique du Reel. Lignes 31 (2010):
79 86.
T R A N S PA R E N C Y , O PA C I T Y , A N D E X P O S U R E M I C H E L S U R YA 523
Adrian May completed his doctoral thesis on the intellectual review Lignes at the Univer-
sity of Cambridge in 2014. He is undertaking a new project investigating the reaction of
art and cultural politics to austerity measures in France.