1. The illusion of transparency Here space appears as luminous, as intelligible, as giving action free reign. What happens in space lends a miraculous quality to thought, which becomes incarnate by means of design (in both senses of the word). The world serves as mediator — itself of great fidelity — between mental activity (invention) and social activity (realization); and it is deployed in space. The illusion of transparency goes hand in hand with a view of space as innocent, as free of traps or secret places. Anything hidden or dissimulated — and hence is dangerous — is antagonistic to transparency, under whose reign everything can be taken in at a single glance from that mental eye which illuminates whatever it contemplates.
. . .
The act of writing is supposed, beyond its immediate effects, to imply a discipline that facilitates the grasping of the ‘object’ by the writing and speaking ‘subject’. In any event, the spoken and written word are taken for (social) practice; it is assumed that absurdity and obscurity, which are treated as aspects of the same thing, may be dissipated without any corresponding dissipation of the ‘object’. Thus, communication brings the non-communicated into the realm of the communicated — the incommunicable having no existence beyond that ever-pursued residue.
. . .
‘Everything must be said! No time limit on speech! Everything must be written! Writing transforms language, therefore writing transforms society! Writing is signifying practice!’
Such agendas only succeed in conflating revolution with transparency.The illusion of transparency turns out to be a transcendental illusion: a trap, operating on the basis of its own quasi-magical power, but by the same token referring back immediately to other traps — traps which are its alibis, its masks.
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space 27-29
