Publish at November 09 2021 Updated November 16 2021
My first two hundred films I saw in a state of clandestinity, through truancy, or by entering the cinema without paying...
François Truffaut. Actor, Artist, Filmmaker (1932 - 1984)
There is a long history of the underground. Clandestinity is the sulphur it is also the beginning of the organization of "parallel societies" that live on the fringe of official society with their codes and secluded places. A long history of clandestine activity is traced, the protestants who hid their faith, the resistance fighters who acted in secret, the prohibition that drove people to consume alcohol in secret. A world of secrecy develops whenever beliefs or practices are challenged forcing a minority to hide, sometimes producing even greater problems than the protection sought, as in the example of prostitution
It could be that secrecy has become the solution to a society of hyper-transparency where everyone knows everything about everyone. What if we are creating parallel societies, a bit like what is happening in Iran or the former USSR countries where, to live according to one's beliefs, discretion and concealment are de rigueur. By dint of being laid bare, watched, stared at by surveillance cameras, the individual is in demand of a little oblivion.
Of course clandestinity is not the sole preserve of solitary inventors at the back of their garage (American imaginary) or the back of their kitchen (French imaginary), clandestinity is just as much shared by thugs. But with the society of generalized surveillance that is gradually taking hold, other areas of social, economic or cultural activity are sliding towards the nocturnal, the hidden, the discreet.
Illegal activities accommodate themselves very well to dim lights, isolated places, shifted hours, and difficulties of access. A drug lab is not a street corner, but can you name the address of a hacker's temple where new computer programs are invented in all honesty? Have you ever shuddered when connecting to the dark net?
Research has rules and prohibitions often related to ethical issues but researchers will not stop transgressing and conducting clandestine investigations no matter the cost or risk. It doesn't matter to some that hybridizing human DNA with other biological materials raises questions since they know how to do it and it is possible, so they jump in.
Clandestine immigrants are struggling to make a place for themselves in societies that are sometimes unwelcoming, living apart sometimes in a very difficult way, their only solutions are moonlighting. In Western societies with a reputation for wealth, they try to get out of clandestinity, obtain papers and recognition. Clandestinity is for them a heavy burden, it is a test, a formative experience.
Gangsters, doctors free of all rules, immigrants learn in the shadow of screens, in a marginal sociality.
With a continuous rise in behavioral control, some seek to circumvent the rules, interpret them favorably, arrange them and if that is not enough to circumvent them. Young people are throwing giant parties using social media even when health constraints dictate. With covid, many party organizers have hidden their activities or bars. They are organizing a clandestine lifestyle for themselves.
Hackers and other anonymous, fringe-idea groupuscules are creating cultural landmarks of their own. Their codes carry a different expectation of how to make society. The clandestine way of learning escapes school rhythms or the rules of traditional educational institutions.
In his thesis, Pascal Cyrot shows how the living environment of Slim, a would-be pimp, trains him for his trade. He explains that a succession of self-taught episodes experienced in an informal way is particularly learning. Clandestine education is a life path not mapped out in advance. But if the individual learns in secret, some masters try to influence our behaviors without our knowledge by means of adaptive learning (algorithms present us with exercises of difficulty chosen by the coder supposedly adapted to our level) or Nudge (the influencer plays on perceptual biases to make us act in the desired direction).
Sneakily they project onto the learners what they think is good for them. They use behaviorist pedagogy to inflect their way of being. They have a hidden agenda. In doing so, they restrict an essential element of learning which is self-direction of one's learning.
By removing this element, they are in effect limiting a resource for maintaining a motivation to learn. Thinking and its conduct remain intimate activities that a society of transparency would like to penetrate further.
Libertarians are interested in the expression of clandestine thoughts from which singular actions spring. For some libertarian thinkers it may, in fact, be the case that living is becoming a clandestine activity, so present are the codifications, norms and role expectations. Thinking inside one's head is still protected from intrusion by others, until scanners, probes, or chips are implanted.
"You can't do philosophy from the outside. Philosophy is not about expounding ideas. It does not consist of convincing people that this thesis is better than that thesis. It consists in settling down in the way of thinking and the way of life and deploying it. It is a clandestine work that each person can only do for themselves.
After that, one tries to write, which is the most difficult thing because often one cannot precisely. But one must aim at expression, the expression of that movement: that absolute interiority of thought to itself when it expresses itself, when it seeks its thread and its straight line. So we have to try to restore the right thread. It's clandestine."
Libertarian Info https://www.infolibertaire.net/dans-la-clandestinite/
In the past there has been clandestine literature, it seems that we are in the process of reinventing the forms of it, and what if these new writings and free thoughts bring us a renewal of creativity?
Sources
Clandestine synthetic drug labs
https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/drugs-drogues/msdi-ilcmds/lab-fra.htm
Very high security lab
https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/pharmacie-sante/virus-dangereux-7-labos-sous-tres-haute-securite-1199460
Clandestine library
https://www.letudiant.fr/educpros/actualite/sci-hub-une-bibliotheque-scientifique-clandestine-sur-le-web.html
The World The Dangers of the Underground
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2013/11/28/dangers-de-la-clandestinite_3521325_3232.html
Protestant Museum Objects of the Underground
https://museeprotestant.org/notice/objets-de-la-clandestinite/
History of the underground - https://www.absinthemarket.com/histoire-clandestinite-interdiction/
20 minutes Paris The underground is about to become the norm of the nightlife
https://www.20minutes.fr/paris/2857823-20200909-paris-clandestinite-va-devenir-norme-monde-nuit
Cyrot, P. (2009). Episodes and autodidactic sociabilities. Pour une description compréhensive des relations sociales du sujet en situation d'autoformation (Doctoral dissertation, Paris 10). https://bdr.parisnanterre.fr/theses/internet/2009PA100067.pdf
Cristol D Muller A, "Les apprentissages informels dans la formation pour adultes", Savoirs, 2013/2 (n° 32), p. 7-9. DOI: 10.3917/savo.032.0007. URL: https://www.cairn.info/revue-savoirs-2013-2-page-7.htm
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