Extimacy, When Privacy Becomes Public
We live in a reality in which privacy manifests itself frequently in the public sphere. We have, almost unconsciously, become voyeurs of the lives of others, the one that is published voluntarily on social networks. Extimacy, understood as the act by which the private becomes public, completely transforms the way of understanding the world.
Let’s face it, it is less and less difficult for us to publish this thought that we just had. To publish what we are having for breakfast or what music we are listening to right now. If everyone’s doing it, why can’t we? New technologies are a common space where we are all innocent spectators and discreet exhibitionists.
Disclosing, sharing, or posting private information is not just a way to build community with those who do as well. Making the public private makes us visible. This makes us present in a technological and digital scenario in which we often feel that if we do not appear there, we do not exist.
The closeness tends to persist. So let’s understand what this concept consists of, which, as curious as it may seem, is not entirely new.
Extimacy, what is it and how is it manifested?
It was the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who coined the term extimite. For him, this concept represented a state in which the human being is defined by the fact of having certain very intimate areas which only have meaning in the outside world. The unconscious, for example, is an internal psychic state, but which does not end up expressing itself outside.
The French psychiatrist Serge Tisseron used the Lacanian term a few years ago to apply it to modernity. Privacy today is not a state. It is a process in which new technologies encourage us to show part of our private and psychic life to the public sphere and, more specifically, to the digital world.
Does that mean that we have suddenly become exhibitionists? Not exactly. We are not in the broad sense, because each of us chooses what he wants to show.
Also, what we publish is often not even real. We select, we choose meticulously what to show, how and when. We are not all that we see in the networks. We are what we choose for others to see.
A resource for building authentic relationships
We enjoy looking at the lives of others to discover, see, understand, yearn, admire, learn and even envy. We also like to feel emotions. Extimacy is an ideal resource for creating an emotional impact on those who observe us, on those who focus their attention on their screens to enter the world of others.
Big brands, network gurus and instagramers know that one way to attract followers is to reveal little intimacies. Thanks to this, people we don’t know are suddenly close to us by revealing things about their life, opening the door to their chosen intimacy.
So that we identify with these strangers, who generate us empathy and make us hope for their next publications. Let us remember, however, that this approach which defines extimacy does not at all mean that we see what the person really is. Rather, we see what the latter wants to represent.
Share what is private to make yourself visible and reinterpret
The digital scene, networks, communication media and everything behind a screen forms another reality parallel to ours. The cell phone, the electronic mail, the chats, the social networks… All this sets in scene a scenario in which we also want to be present and, for that, it is necessary to practice the extimity.
Making the private public places us in this alternate world where we can create a new self, where we can have a presence like almost everyone else. Because the one who is not present on this plane does not exist. It is therefore not part of this new culture, of this sphere which is more and more relevant on a daily basis.
Extimacy and fixation on immediacy
Extimacy is defined today by a very particular characteristic: immediacy . When you open your cell phone, intimacy is revealed through what is happening here and now.
This is what matters most. What happened yesterday or the day before is irrelevant. In today’s times, most of us aspire to “consume” or see what’s happening in the second.
The stolen intimacy or the intimacy we reveal without knowing it
Most of us post our photos, videos, ideas and thoughts on a voluntary basis. In other words, the most common is to make public small pieces of the private universe in a conscious way, but filtered at all times. However, sometimes we forget that there is another kind of camouflaged extimacy.
Electronic devices have a camera and a microphone. The apps we use and the social networks we subscribe to have algorithms and bots that analyze everything we do in these digital worlds. We are therefore observed, listened to and analyzed.
Our private life then becomes public because of the inherent danger of a technology aimed at collecting as much information as possible about us and thus being able to sell it to large companies. The private is not only made public, it is commercialized.
We’ve reached a point where the privacy and the public are becoming excessively diluted, and that presents risks. Let’s keep this in mind. Let’s think about the extent to which extimacy benefits us or harms us.
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