Contemporary French and Francophone Studies

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Transparency, Opacity, and Exposuremichel

Surya, Lignes, and Intellectual Responses to
Financial Crises

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

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17409292.2015.1092235

Published online: 07 Nov 2015.

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 Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 2015
Vol. 19, No. 5, 515 523, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17409292.2015.1092235

TRANSPARENCY, OPACITY, AND EXPOSURE

MICHEL SURYA, LIGNES, AND INTELLECTUAL
RESPONSES TO FINANCIAL CRISES
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Adrian May

ABSTRACT Through the contemporary intellectual review Lignes, this article charts the
responses to neoliberalism and crisis of Michel Surya, Fr
ed
eric Lordon, and Fr
ed
eric
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 comit
e invisible and the black
bloc.

Keywords: neoliberalism; financial capitalism; Lignes; French intellectuals; domination; crisis

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

2015 Taylor & Francis

 516 CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

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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talism on national sovereignty, political agency and democratic legitimacya

concern continued today in issues such as Le devenir grec de lEurope n
eolib
erale
(October 2012).
This article explores one aspect of this emphasis on economics within Lignes.
After Suryas focus on transparency as capitalisms new watchword of ideolog-
ical legitimation, this critique is taken up by left-wing economists such as
Fr
ed
eric Lordon. Yet whilst opacity seems to represent a strategic resistance
to the moral imperative of transparency, such binary responses are often inade-
quate. Instead, with Fr
ed
eric Neyrat the term exposure permits a more
nuanced mediation between this aesthetic terminology and more concrete issues
such as the exposure of individuals to debt, surveillance, prosecution, and harm.
Initially developed in Lignes articles, in 1996 Surya published the first vol-
ume of his De la domination series, Le Capital, la transparence et les affaires. This
book responded to the various affaires, or scandals, that had rocked the business
and political establishments from the early 1980s, often involving the PS: these
included laffaire des
ecoutes, laffaire Urba, laffaire Elf, the sinking of the ship
Rainbow Warrior and the provision of HIV contaminated blood. A
whitewash law in 1990, in which all infractions committed before June 15
1989 regarding campaign financing or political parties would be amnestied,
was an attempt at damage limitation (Celestin and DalMolin 374); yet the scan-
dals continued, laffaire Cahuzac of 2013 being the latest to afflict the PS. In
response, the conventional wisdom argued that greater transparency was neces-
sary to restore public confidence in the political and entrepreneurial elites.
Surya, however, is cynical about the motivation behind such discourses. As
Boris Groys noted in Lignes, glasnost (transparency), was the key term employed
in the Soviet Union to combat corruption, and the comparison is not meant to
flatter democratic regimes deploying the same terminology (36). For Surya, the
frequent demands for transparency represent la plus grande op
eration de justifi-
cation id
eologique jamais entrepris [the biggest operation of ideological justifica-
tion ever undertaken] by capitalism (De la domination 8). By weeding out a few
rotten apples for their excessive greed and irregular activities, the rest of the
 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 517

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 d
emocratie quon liquidera la d
emocratie [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. Fr
ed
eric
Lordon, an economist for Le Monde diplomatique who was also associated with
Les E
conomistes atterr
es,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 Instabilit
e 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 prot
eger l
economie r
eelle).
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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Secondly, claims of transparency were also fallacious: domination is portrayed

as anonymous and its practices relatively invisible, only exposed to the general
public during moments of crisis such as the affaires and market crashes (De la
domination 28). Lordon goes further, arguing that opacity is in fact an intrinsic
aspect of financial capitalism. During the 1950s and 1960s, some degree of
transparency was possible as Keynesian economic policies provided relative
security and predictable outcomes. Lordon calls the subsequent deregulation of
financial markets since the mid-1970s the hermeneutic turn in political econ-
omynow, the success of various economic policies depends more on the
approval of the markets, the tone of the moment and the faith placed in their
credibility than the concrete results of such policies (Les Quadratures de la politique

economique 12). If the markets believe a policy will fail, capital flees a sinking ship
then automatically doomed to failure. Greater transparency can therefore have
disastrous consequences: for example, Lordon notes that the publishing of profit
warnings can have disproportionately negative results, some firms in the
Autumn of 2000 losing between 10 and 20 percent of their value after transpar-
ently stating that they would not reach the levels of profitability expected of
them (Finance internationale 11). The ostentatious drive to transparency is
also seen as disingenuous: if the system were indeed completely transparent,
activities such as spread betting and hedge funds would be impossible. As Lor-
don notes, the more opaque markets are more the scope there is for extracting
derivatives, increasing the possibilities for wealth creation (Comment prot
eger
l
economie r
eelle). So whilst superficially market leaders supported greater
transparency, Lordon reads this as a foil to avoid deeper, costly structural
reformsand carry on business as usual.
Yet for Surya the demands for greater transparency spread beyond the eco-
nomic sector, infiltrating our daily lives. Structural unemployment since the
1970s is seen as exacerbated by the privatization of public services and the desic-
cation of the welfare state as increasing proportions of the global workforce are
rendered superfluous: with work disappearing, the political problem becomes
how doccuper ceux quil ne lui est plus n
ecessaire demployer [what to do
 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 519

with those workers domination no longer needs to employ] (De La domination

96). As well an operation of ideological justification, Surya argues that managing
the potential threat of these superfluous masses will require la plus grande op
e-
ration de police [the biggest policing operation] ever undertaken by capitalism
as the movement of migrant bodies needs regulation and securitization (43).
The population is therefore encouraged to follow capitals example of ostenta-
tion, rendering themselves transparent to dominationwhich can then easily
select those who belong to the socially productive order, and expell or imprison
those who do not. Two trends are identified in 1996 that have only accelerated
since: reality television, social networks and digital media encourage subjects to
render their entire lives visible to anonymous global viewers; whilst the securiti-
zation of migrant and suspect populations necessitates increasingly illiberal
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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 sp
eculatifs est
tellement autonomis
ee 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 comit
e 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 comit
e 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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all-encompassing, placing him within a genealogy comprising of Adorno, Mar-

cuse, Debord and Baudrillard for whom there is no outside from the spectacle
and therefore no potential locus of agency for resistance, the only remaining
option being to hide. For Bensad, these despairing versions of Frankfurt School
domination theory only generate disenchantment and disengagement (Le Specta-
cle 87).
Another book published by Lignes, Fr
ed
eric Neyrats Sur
expos
es, suggests
another approach. Writing in 2004, and so after the terrorism fears of 9/11 had
exacerbated the securitization of Europes borders, Neyrat agrees that the
increased policing of populations is unprecedented. Boundaries between dis-
courses of immigration and terrorism were blurred by a preventative identifica-
tion of dangerous groups to be monitored or apprehended, even before any
infraction had been committed. Yet Neyrat argues that this means only certain
groups are placed under this increased surveillance rather than others. This is
not la surveillance bio-politique totale [total bio-political surveillance], but an
attempt to monitor des flux de circulation [the circulation of human traffic]
(251). Some groups are therefore deemed safe, whilst others are designated as
threats to be monitored or removed. Rather than a Foucauldian pan-optique sub-
jecting all citizens to constant scrutiny, Neyrat uses Didier Bigos term ban-
optique as only certain groups are exposed to surveillance, harm, and expulsion
(252).
The term exposure, drawn from key Lignes reference Jean-Luc Nancy,
usefully mediates between the binary of transparency and opacity by measuring
not just degrees of appearance and disappearance, but also exposure to certain
elements, reconnecting this representational discourse with concrete political
struggles. For Nancy, being is always being-with, and from this emphasis on
ontological inter-relationality we can expand towards an analysis of our increas-
ingly imbricated global context in which political, economic and environmental
causes on one side of the globe have profound effects on the other. For Neyrat,
this level of exposure has become overexposure: globalization, having reached the
limits of the physical globe, is instead becoming intensified, colonizing ever
 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 521

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 pr
ecarisation g
en
eralis
ee des conditions de vie [greater pre-
cariousness in the general conditions of life], but a pr
ecarisation 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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ecological catastrophe buries issues of economic disparity (211). So although

Neyrat argues that we are all inevitably exposed, these levels of exposure are
differentiated: le tort mondial concerne chaque un, diff
erentiellement, qualita-
tivement et quantitativementmais sans exception [this global bio-political
threat concerns every-one, in different qualitative and quantitative manners, but
without exception] (214). From Neyrats account one can derive a broad-based
social solidarity, but also a differentiated political position which responds to
interrelated questions of exposure, such as: who is visibly exposed, whose
actions are seen and accounted for, whose privacy is invaded, and whose should
be? Whose citizenship is exposed to threats of withdrawal or indefinite sus-
pension? Who is exposed to environmental degradation? Who is legally exposed
to prosecution, and who should be? Whose financial stability is exposed to spec-
ulative risk? Such a differential stance also opens questions of domination or
agency: who has the capacity to act, where and how, and on the behalf of what
other actors?
Suryas critique of transparency therefore provides a useful account of how
the current neoliberal financial order is legitimated. It could also pose questions
for activismfor example, in Britain UK Uncut is one of the most successful
grassroots networks, and amongst other things is responsible for highlighting
the staggering amount of business tax unpaid by multinationals.3 However, for
Surya such actions would re-enforce the legitimacy of those firms that do pay
taxes, and therefore participate in a general policing operation rather than
directly challenging the structural inequalities generated by multinationals.
Yet transparency can also be liberating. Occupys Rolling Jubilee campaign
raises money to buy other peoples debts to then write them off, encouraging
those liberated from debt to contribute a small amount to annul the financial
commitments of others.4 Although relieving citizens of their debt burden is
partly the point, the fundamental reason for the campaign is to reveal to the gen-
eral population how debt is servicedcollection agencies buy debts for next to
nothing, yet relentlessly hound debtors for sums of money many can never
afford. By transparently exposing the fact that their exposure to debt is worth
 522 CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

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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This work was supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council

(AHRC) doctoral award.

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

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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.