Last May 16 appeared in the pages of the Duty an excerpt from an article published in Disadvantage by Jonathan Durand Folco, article in which the author hypothesizes “that the massive surveillance of our existence by digital technologies, in particular through smart phones and connected objects, is not only forced, but desired”. Disconcerting hypothesis if there is one and in the face of which it is difficult for me to remain silent. While I share a distrust of the commodification of personal data and the form of digital surveillance it entails, the assumption rests on a flawed premise that confuses the need for recognition with a supposed desire to be monitored.
In the original article, titled “Why do we like being watched? Durand Folco explains that “the desire to be spied on, seen, loved, recognized, shared, commented on (for good or bad) embodies a new form of subjectivity, that of the connected narcissistic self. Surveillance is no longer feared, it is sought, by a socially maintained and technologically solicited mimetic desire to be seen and recognized by everyone”. Thus, deep within ourselves, we would like to be spied on, watched, as we want to be seen and recognized.
This confusion is made possible following a few lessons in Freudo-Marxism in which Durand Folco recalls Éric Fromm’s thesis published in 1941 under the title The fear of freedom (The Fear of Freedom). He thus reports that the success of the rise of the fascist movements could be explained by the presence of an authoritarian social character within the population “which would have favored a desire for submission to a strong figure like Mussolini or Hitler within the middle classes. and popular”.
However, the explanation of submission by a desire to submit appears as a tautological shortcut and does not allow us to understand the use that was made of organized lies in propaganda and of political terror, in particular by the Nazis. Hannah Arendt, who described this terror as the “very essence” of totalitarianism in her Origins of totalitarianismshows how submission can become acceptable in order to obtain protection against an omnipresent threat, however fantasized, or to guard against the violence that accompanies political terror.
This effectiveness of lies and terror is a more plausible explanation than any unconscious desire for submission imputed to the working classes. Submission is the price to pay for peace and protection, which one accepts sometimes wrongly, sometimes rightly.
The price to pay
What about Durand Folco’s hypothesis, supported by Fromm’s, according to which we are inhabited by “a more or less unconscious desire to be seen, heard, followed, recognized and approved by others” which would amount to a desire to be spied on and watched? First, note that it is surprising that recognition is here qualified as a more or less unconscious desire. Given the number of times my children have told me and still tell me “Dad, look at me”, I believe, perhaps naively, that this desire for approval and recognition is not at all unconscious.
German philosopher Axel Honneth (The struggle for recognition) and Quebec philosopher Charles Taylor (Multiculturalism. Difference and democracy) have well shown how recognition is a vital social need, not an unconscious desire, and that it manifests itself in many objective signs that we seek because, at least in part, they confirm the value of what we do (approving glances, words of congratulations, employment status, medals, diplomas, salary, etc.). The need to be seen and recognized by authority figures and people who are significant to us, that is, to recognize ourselves as valid or as having power over us, is at the very foundation belonging to a group and the construction of personal identity.
Although this need is not always clearly expressed or felt, it cannot be confused with an unconscious desire to be monitored. Here too, the fact of being seen without one’s knowledge, spied on, watched, appears to be the price to pay to have access to social network platforms which promise visibility and recognition to their users, just as the harassment of paparazzi is the ransom glory for some.
However, the ransom should not be confused with the glory. It seems more reasonable to think that we accept that some of our personal data be extracted and used because this is the price to pay for an improvement in our customer experience or because we have no choice but to have access to the platforms that seem so essential to us in order to meet our needs in a few clicks (whether to have food delivered, to move around, to find information or to show up on social networks).
A lack of vigilance
There is a bargain there that irritates us more or less, depending on our enthusiasm or our distrust of the digital platforms of this world. There is no need to invoke mysterious unconscious desires and generalize narcissism in order to explain that many accept the price to be paid or are relatively indifferent to the matter, an acceptance which is favored by a generalized ignorance concerning the value of our personal data and the methods by which it is extracted and used. Our ignorance and our misunderstanding of the issues are much more to be feared than the unconscious.
Putting the latter in the dock gives a false explanation, which presents an apparently irrational behavior as the pure and simple expression of an irrational desire which would already be formed in the unconscious, and prevents us from trying to understand the reasons for the actors in their own context. What can be done in the face of a problem posed in these terms? Launch into the psychoanalysis of the popular masses and the reform of unconscious desires?
It seems to me that this circumvents the crux of the problem, which is situated in an education system which has difficulty in forming citizens up to the level of contemporary scientific and technological knowledge, but which is also situated in a media system which promotes commercial spiel and entertainment and struggles to deliver fair and understandable information to citizens. It lies in the laxity of public authorities in the face of large digital companies, which echoes the lack of vigilance of individual users left to their own devices.
It seems to me that there is a job there, vast and arduous, certainly, but real, while the context of these users is characterized by ignorance of the value produced voluntarily by using the said supposedly free platforms as well as the dangers that it conceals. It is ignorance and the lack of concerted vigilance that allows the scam. Accepting some form of monitoring and capturing of our personal data is not the same as desiring it.