<nettime> confessions without relief

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

An interesting talk today at 33c3 by Charleyne Biondi- parallels between 
the modern day surveillance and 18th century crusades against masturbation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Ae0qscmDk


From the intro:

The High Priests of the Digital Age

The High Priests of the Digital Age Are Working Behind Your Back to Make 
You Confess, and Repent.

Just as 18th century priests enforced total surveillance measures on 
masturbators, the new priests of the digital age are listening to your 
confessions and forcing you into puritanical repentance.

Who doesn’t have a relative, a friend, a colleague, who broke up because 
of an iMessage showing up on the wrong device, fooled by the iCloud, by 
a suspicious Facebook like, or a Pokemon caught in the wrong neighborhood?

I want to make the claim that a new system of surveillance, organized by 
the new priests of our digital age, are slyly acting behind our back to 
make us conform to a new form of puritan morality.

At the beginning of the 18th century, masturbation suddenly became a 
topic of intense reflection. In the Enlightenment Encyclopedia it is 
described as the new disease of a wounded conscience and a heinous sin. 
Surprisingly, the Christian Church was not responsible. It had, until 
then, never regarded masturbation as anything other than a marginal 
problem for adult men (and especially monks).

The people responsible for making masturbation a sin were economists, 
who worried about the consequences of masturbation for productivity in 
an economy that depended on the endless desire for more. The 
condemnation of masturbation spread, and in no time, doctors were making 
scientific claims to prove the dangers of masturbation, while priests 
made it their new obsession.

In the confessional, the sinners had to avow everything, not only their 
reprehensible actions, but their reprehensible dreams, the languorous 
images that crossed their consciousness, the birth of desire in their 
troubled mind. The priests demanded to know it all, the most inner 
thoughts of the masturbators. The sinner was meant to keep his own mind 
under surveillance.

Today, we believe that we have overcome this obscure period. 
Masturbation is widely accepted as a healthy sexual practice. But most 
importantly, our liberal democracies strongly posit that public ethics 
should remain neutral regarding sexuality, and that each one of us is 
free to have the sexuality that we prefer, enjoy, and that no 
institution is authorized to morally judge us for our sexual activities.

Yet, I want to make the claim that a new system of surveillance, 
organized by the new priests of our digital age, are slyly acting behind 
our back to make us conform to a new form of puritan morality. Just as 
the 18th century priests did in their Churches, the high priests of the 
digital age listen to our confessions, record them, and eventually make 
us repent.


The economic interests of having us behave morally are numerous: the 
best customer is predictable, and who is more predictable than an 
obedient child, or a pious wife or husband? From the pithy history of 
masturbation to real life break-ups, I will demonstrate the dark 
connections between digital surveillance, neoliberal economics and morality.

I am a researcher at Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris in 
political philosophy. I am an expert of the Snowden case and digital 
surveillance. This will be my first talk on masturbation.

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