Photo Credit: Spring Bouquet Viburnum, Talitha May
by Talitha May and Solomon Davis
“Hypervisibility is obscene; it lacks the negativity of what is hidden, inaccessible, and secret” —Byung-Chul Han
Course Description
In his text, The Transparency Society, philosopher Byung-Chul Han explores the ideology underpinning what he calls the transparency society through a series of essays that examine the society of positivity, exhibition, evidence, pornography, acceleration, intimacy, information, unveiling, and control. Contrary to positive connotations of transparency, Han turns this notion upside down and suggests transparency yields horrors. This class explores the implications of transparency upon ourselves and the everyday. The curated readings ask readers to question what are the implications of when transparency homogenizes society and effaces difference? In a society that privileges hypercommunication, acceleration, and illumination, what becomes of the senses? What becomes of a society that willingly participates in the digital panopticon? We invite you to pause with each reading, engage with mystery and complexity, and engage in aesthetic contemplation. The class asks for subterranean work, comfort with intersectionality, sustained contemplation, listening to and learning from the Other/non-human animal species, and openness for self transformation. Class will include forest baths, daybook sketching, listening to songbird, and an invitation to linger and reside in ambiguity.
Hypercommunication & Transparency
“Illumination is exploitation” —Byung-Chul Han
- Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society
- Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts
- Talitha May, “Cold Showers, Horror Movies, and Violence: The Limitations of Truth in an Age of Trumpism”
- Feels Good Man (Directors Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini, 2020)
- Center for Humane Technology, Your Undivided Attention podcasts
Lingering & Slowness
“Hyperactivity, hyperproduction, and hypercommunication are obscene; they accelerate beyond purpose” —Byung-Chul Han
- One Square Inch: A Sanctuary for Silence at Olympic National Park
- Farm Sanctuary, “Sanctuary Day” excerpted from “Better Together: Valentine’s Day at Farm Sanctuary” 01:32 – 7:22; 18:02 – 26:08
- Orr, David, “Slow Knowledge,” in The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
- Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering
- Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
- The Nap Ministry
- Zeami Motokiyo, “To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill”
Interlude: Sense & Scents
“The senses are slow. They impede the accelerated circulation of information and communication.” —Byung-Chul Han
“Only complex, narrative formations exude [verströmen] fragrance” —Byung-Chul Han
- Hinoki Cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa)
- Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)
- Kinmokusei tree (Osmanthus fragrans)
Mystery & Complexity
“Playing with equivocation and ambivalence, with mystery and enigma, heightens erotic tension” —Byung-Chul Han
- Michel Foucault, “How an ‘Experience-Book’ Is Born,” in Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio Trombadori
- pattrice jones, The Oxen at the Intersection: A Collision
- Kyle Hill, “Waxbows: The Incredible Beauty of a Blown Out Candle,”
- Anouar Brahem, “Le Pas du Chat Noir”
- Pablo Neruda, “Ode to a Cluster of Violets,” Odes to Common Things
- Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII,” One Hundred Love Sonnets
- John Keats, “On Negative Capability: Letter to George and Tom Keats”
Metamorphosis
“The Society of transparency is a society without poets, without deduction or metamorphosis” —Byung-Chul Han
- My Octopus Teacher (Directors Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed, Netflix, 2020)
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals
- Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Editors Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan, and Heather Anne
- Katsumi Komagata, Petit Arbre, Review: Maria Popova
- Solomon Davis, “And I Choose to Walk” (see below)
“And I Choose to Walk” by Solomon Davis
Barechested and barefooted, he comes into the market-place;
Daubed with mud and ashes, how broadly he smiles!
There is no need for the miraculous power of the gods,
For he touches, and lo! the dead trees come into full bloom.
“The Ten Stages of Spiritual Cow-Herding,” D.T. Suzuki
Courses running fraught and fast
in tortured jagged waters
leagues wide, shallow sharp,
to spill in awaiting seas
upon which all shall float
in communion exigent, coveted,
until the best of swimmers drown.
My vessel weak and exposed
propelled down savage floes
blurring dangers, opaque shores
yearning to be seen, heard, felt;
landmarks, sighs, scents marked
only in a passing passed
as I paddle impotent to return,
lacking strength to correct course
against roiling shifts, wakes
of others passing me in rafts
lashed together, buttressed
flotillas of bumper guarded sameness
scorning clarion rapids, rolling barrels
churning forgotten bodies never recovered.
I have seen shattered vessels,
sheared and broken, abandoned,
wedged in Scyllan groves;
I have seen the flotilla pass,
seen the cursory glance of some aboard,
quickly looking away, defeated,
lest they be jettisoned.
Night skies pass as prescient scrolling,
clouds denied languid drifting dreams
as haste drives to idyllic openings,
unmoored transcendent “truths,”
senses subjugated to imagination
reactive and oppressive, exposed
as firs rooted in starving sands,
doomed to fall when storms approach,
flotsam consigned to a drowning sea.
My faulty vessel takes on water,
as it must:
I lack the desire to bail,
each crack slowing contrived impetus,
each droplet an aperture opening,
flotillas noted only peripherally
as I see, and smell, and hear
signs and markers missed before, always there,
exhaustion bred of dissonance,
now fittingly flung to brackish shore;
here a broken vessel will wither,
and I choose to walk.
We are grateful to Miko Brown, Farm Sanctuary Senior Manager of Social Justice Programs for the “Sanctuary Day” excerpts from the “Better Together: Valentine’s Day at Farm Sanctuary” video.
Talitha May is a researcher who lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Solomon Davis lives in the Pacific Northwest. Veteran. Vegan. Forklift driver. Adjunct. Recently published in the Journal of Critical Animal Studies.
