Abstract

The chapter sets out to explore the rhetoric of transparency employed by what is commonly referred to as the Occupy movement. In so doing, it sheds light on the normative dimension of this rhetoric, which is used to promote alternative forms of democratic representation and participation and also occurs in tales of empowerment framing the rise and refinement of online technologies and media used by the movement. At the same time, the author aims at unraveling this rhetoric’s inherent ambivalence revolving around the seemingly paradoxical implications of transparency, arguing that the movement’s emphatic notion of transparency—as a precondition for democratic participation and deliberation—is complicit in legitimizing structures and practices of surveillance.