Transparency: New Trajectories in Law

Description

This book critiques the contemporary recourse to transparency in law and policy. This is, ostensibly, the information age. At the heart of the societal shift toward digitalisation is the call for transparency and the liberalisation of information and data. Yet, with the recent rise of concerns such as 'fake news', post-truth and misinformation, where the policy responses to all these phenomena has been a petition for even greater transparency, it becomes imperative to critically reflect on what this dominant idea means, whom it serves, and what the effects are of its power. In response, this book provides the first sustained critique of the concept of transparency in law and policy. It offers a concise overview of transparency in law and policy around the world, and critiques how this concept works discursively to delimit other forms of governance, other ways of knowing and other realities. It draws on the work of Michel Foucault on discourse, archaeology and genealogy, together with later Foucaultian scholars, including Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Judith Butler, as a theoretical framework for challenging and thinking anew the history and understanding of what has become one of the most popular buzzwords of 21st century law and governance. At the intersection of law and governance, this book will be of considerable interest to those working in these fields; but also to those engaged in other interdisciplinary areas, including society and technology, the digital humanities, technology laws and policy, global law and policy, as well as the surveillance society. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Preface Introduction: the discourse of transparency ‘Beginning with the things it produced’ The discourse of transparency Transparency in scholarship Book outline Approach: the order of discourse Summary Further reading PART I: The discourse of transparency 1 A brief history of transparency’s entry into discourse Introduction Archaeology Transparency, the enlightenment and human rights Designing transparency Transparency as metaphor Summary Further reading 2 Access to information delimited Introduction Epistemic violence of transparency Law and exclusion Summary Further reading 3 Transparency universal Introduction Transparency and inclusivity Proselytising transparency Summary Further reading PART II: Towards the post-transparent 4 The fallacies of transparency: fake news, artificial intelligence and the hyperinformation society Introduction Fake news: Baudrillard and the hyperinformation society The illusion of transparency Summary Further reading 5 Producing the transparent subject: the gaze turns inward Introduction Foucault and subjectivity The transparent subject Self-disclosure Legislating for the transparent subject Whistleblowing laws Depoliticising effects Summary Further reading PART III: Resistance 6 Resisting transparency Introduction Foucault, power and resistance Resistance to transparency Summary Further reading Conclusion Index