Are Some Things Unrepresentable?

Abstract

Jacques Ranciè re, in his essay 'Are Some Things Unrepresentable?' , puts forth a challenge that is ever more pertinent to our times. What constitutes the unrepresentable today? Ranciè re frames his answer in a very specific way: the question of unrepresentability leads directly to the way in which political violence may or may not be put into an image. Offering an alternative to Ranciè re's approach, the present article turns instead to the information society, asking if and how something might be unrepresentable in a world saturated by data and information. Thus one approaches the issue of transparency and secrecy here from the perspective of the relative perspicuity (or opacity) of data visualization. Two theses structure the argument, first that 'data have no necessary visual form' and, second, that 'only one visualization has ever been made of an information network'. The tension between these two theses leads to a disconcerting conclusion, that the triumph of information aesthetics precipitates a decline in informatic perspicuity. One is obligated therefore to call for a strong reinvigoration of poetics and hermeneutics within the digital universe, so that representation as such can take place, perhaps for the first time.

Transparency and mistrust: Who or what should be made transparent?

“…This suggests that rather than simply making information available the ultimate aim should be context-specific "legibility" (Fenster, 2006). Legibility is complicated by big data and "e-transparency," with the need for secondary representation of data via visualizations (Galloway, 2011) or its compilation into high-quality "machinereadable" data sets on websites like Data.gov (Birchall, 2015).…”

Lobbying and the responsible firm: Agenda‐setting for a freshly conceptualized field

“…915 ff.). This is particularly acute in the case of big data, which Galloway () argues is causing informational opacity. Moving to corporations specifically, Schipper and Boje (, p. 510) argue that, while transparency is considered to support virtue, “being too transparent might put integrity in jeopardy.” We find their maxim compelling: “openness if suitable, transparency when necessary and integrity always” (Schipper & Boje, , p. 522).…”

Anti-authoritarian metrics: recursivity as a strategy for post-capitalism

“…He contends that protocols, "the technology of organization and control operating in distributed networks," (p. 317) are actually far more robust and at times insidious forms of control. For Galloway, distributed and decentralized networks are not the inherently democratic or anti-authoritarian structures that Marxist critics Deluze and Guatarri claimed they could be (Galloway, 2001(Galloway, , 2006(Galloway, , 2011. Protocols "structure relationships" and regulate flows amongst and between bits and atoms, such that control is harder to detect and might even appear to an individual as their own free choice rather than a calculated directive.…”