Against clarity

transparencycontrolmanifesto

They ask us to be clear. They ask us to be legible. They ask us to be transparent.

Clarity has become an injunction. Transparency, a police force. Opacity, a crime.

I. Transparency is a trap

When power says “transparency,” it means: show yourselves. When power says “legibility,” it means: make yourselves predictable. When power says “clarity,” it means: stop escaping us.

Transparency is not a right. It is a control mechanism. To be transparent is to be traversed — by gazes, by algorithms, by administrations. It is to become glass. And glass can be shattered.

II. In praise of shadow

There is dignity in darkness. There is a politics of blur, of ambiguity, of the unsaid. Everything that resists immediate interpretation is an act of freedom.

Art has never been clear. Poetry has never been transparent. Thought has never been legible. Asking a text to be “accessible to all” is a polite way of asking it to say nothing.

III. The right to the mask

We claim:

  • The right to anonymity.
  • The right to pseudonym.
  • The right to silence.
  • The right to contradiction.
  • The right not to be understood.
  • The right to disappear.

Against mandatory clarity, we choose voluntary shadow.

This text is deliberately incomplete. It refuses to conclude. Conclude for yourselves — or better yet: don’t.