Transparency

TRANPARENCY

What it is … and is not


Serves an ideological function when used for metaphorical effect; so that what is associated its textual meaning (“seen through”, “open”, “clear”, “without guile or concealment”) is applied to what it is predicated of. Associations with “transparency” from early childhood are generally “good”: infants in caring hands; standing naked before adults; expressing real intentions; “coming clean” about what one has done. Thus, the textual meaning readily goes over to metaphor that evokes the split between being duplicitous vs. frank, attitudes toward which were picked up in childhood.

This already gives “transparency” considerable ideological cache. How easily it meshes with the politics of “left” and “right” (duplicitous v. honest; casuistic v. principles), “liberal” v. “conservative” (permissive v disciplined). Images of ranks of perfectly drilled, precise lines of marching Nazi soldiers, celibate white males devoted to the Holy Mother: these belong to the transparency of German fascism. “Idealistic”, “right”, “obedient”, “disciplined”, “warlike”: these go with right-wing transparency.
This has the double effect of 1. imposing the Father-dominated strain of childhood; and 2. promoting the more fierce, less liberal Father as the one more profitable to appease. The “left”, already stuck behind the acts of good-Tzar killers, has for its lot of “idealism” mainly riddance of just this authoritarian Father. Plus, or course, whatever the results of freeing the children of his oppression and their repression might be. It does promise return of free flow of libido, knocking out identify of the completing totality with anti-cathexis. What ever is “humanistic”, as distinct from “theistic”, or “theistic humanity”, is encompassed by their idealism. The effect of importing the CONJUNCTION of these – Left v Right – into the American political system UNDER GOD intrinsically favors right-wing authoritarianism as the ideal transparency. “Issues” such as abortion and homosexuality are generated which “the voters” of this “democratic system” decide between every four years in presidential elections.

In this context, with this background, the use of “transparency” by G.W. Bush spokesmen goes over into out and out reversal and self-contradiction, since “God” (as completing totality) is simultaneously BOTH: the arch-subjective token, and cosmic-objective text. It’s use is a metaphysical splitter. This follows from the will-to-totality in cathexis toward it. It must be against whatever is against it, which is why “God” use is so dangerous when the psyche of the user is not properly aligned with what is ultimately real.

The effects of folding transparancy as an ideological metaphor into the context of present group discourse, at another level of process, is to “loop together” what you see and what you hear as the token itself is being uttered. “See, this is transparancey.” When an authority is telling you, authoritatively, “what you see is what you get,” how can it not be true? (The Father’s IS the voice of authority in group-fantasy) THERE IS AN ENORMOUS DANGER IN THIS, HOWEVER, DUE TO THE SIGHT-GAG EFFECT. What is seen may be different, even the opposite of what is said, as is happening with the language of democratizing Iraq. Deliberately glossing over this by invoking “transparency” turns “what you see is what you get” into “what I tell you are seeing is what you get”. Sight gags, as when cute dogs are assigned human speech in cartoons, communicate by juxtaposing textual sound with perceptual token. Chuckles, yucks, grins follow automatically. Two separate memory-routes from stimulus to brain-response are simultaneously activated, and both must be made explicit, along with awareness of what the person using signs in this way is doing (“Do I look like a killer to you?”), in order to relate to the situation discriminately.

Use of “transparency” in situations of obvious non-transparency has the effect of either A. arousing the two-track, two-memory processing response, doubling the text and token content in consciousness; or B. ‘tickling’ this process response, but glossing over conflicts if might arouse if permitted to develop, en route to self-serving political applications. (“What? Me/us hide anything?”) . Which way it goes in a given instance would depend on how close to consciousness the counter-evidence (of the user’s duplicity) lies. Alternative A. will be more likely to occur among those whose memories are primed with instances of trauma inflicted by the authoritarian Father, ready to pass over into consciousness. As previously noted, Hitler could appeal to transparency … invoking much less duplicity.