What would a world that forces us to reveal our privacy look like? In his third novel, Panorama (Gallimard), finalist of the Renaudot prize, Lilia Hassaine imagines a society of transparency which revolutionizes its organization and its architecture in the name of security. No more domestic violence when we live in glass houses – known as vivarium houses – which constantly expose us to the gaze of others.
Through this dystopia, the former columnist of Daily by Yann Barthès, on TMC, offers an allegory of social networks which have allowed the best – the freeing of the speech of victims of sexist and sexual violence – as well as the worst – the pillaging of personal data, digital bubbles, the proliferation of ideas conspiracy theorists… Over breakfast in a café in the Montparnasse district, Lilia Hassaine returns to her favorite subjects and plunges into the futuristic world of Panorama which sheds harsh light on our digital and IRL behaviors.
Why did you want to dive into the dystopian world of “Panorama”?
The starting point was the question of transparency. The idea came to me in front of a bathroom lit at night while promoting my previous book [Soleil amer, Gallimard, 2021]. I had the impression of entering into an intimacy. I really saw a scene. The starting point was very literary, even literal. It was not at all thought out or intellectualized. I began to imagine what it would mean if we generalized the idea of a glass house to all of society. If we could see our neighbors all the time, if we could be seen at all times. I didn’t go through the phase of thinking about dystopia.
However, the story takes place in 2049…
Yes, there had to be a time shift for these glass houses to exist. They coincided with questions that I had already asked myself about the place of social networks, about the way in which we show our lives, our interiors, our decorations, our children. On this word of transparency that we heard more and more in the media and political speeches. Today, the kitchens are visible in restaurants, you can see the chefs cooking. When you buy a product commercially, there is this idea of traceability. On the site you can find out which cow’s milk your cheese was made with. I had already formulated these questions to myself without it taking on a literary color.
Was transparency a way for you to approach the issue of social networks?
At the beginning, it was an aesthetic point of view but the idea would not have resonated with me as much if there had not been these reflections around social networks, the way we live, the way we look at ourselves, the way we we judge ourselves. Are we really tolerant of each other? What is the value of how we look at each other? These reflections also run through my first novel, The Eye of the Peacock [Gallimard, 2019]. There was already the question of the gaze, the image, the representation.
You are followed by a large online community, yet you are not very active. Do you distrust social networks?
I have not experienced harassment on social networks, but I am aware of the risk they represent. I have chosen from the beginning not to reveal my opinions. I don’t want to be called upon to speak out on every subject, so I never have. As a journalist [pour Quotidien], I worked on the images all day, and in the evening, I presented my work as part of the show. This should not become a way of valuing myself. I was exposed but I was maintaining discretion. I didn’t give my opinion, I couldn’t be pinned down. As a journalist, it was not me the subject, but that of my column. The fact of not being in a form of self-expression protects a lot.
What does dystopia allow us to say that classical literature does not?
For me, it’s anticipation. It’s closer to a utopia gone wrong. We don’t want to live in this world, but there are all the codes of utopia. On transparency, we are almost there. Dystopia is scary. There is a science fiction side that is not found in the book. It’s more about imagination. Designing transparent slaughterhouses is a good idea to know what we are eating. When we eat meat, we also eat animals which have sometimes been killed in atrocious ways. Why look away? This is where the discomfort sets in. Between good, slightly bizarre ideas and bad ideas, we’re not very far. It allowed me to start from reality and stretch it, to see how far we can go.
The allegory is all the more apt since social networks, like Facebook, also start from a good idea, that of connecting people all over the world. The perverse effects, such as digital bubbles and the theft of personal data, were only visible at a later stage.
We have lost the social side. We are no longer in the sharing of ideas and in the exchange. We are in a system that favors communities of thought, people agree with each other and feed each other. They only see content that supports their opinions. We saw it during the American elections, Donald Trump was elected thanks to Facebook. These platforms are supposed to be democratic and they become organs of propaganda. Data leaks, like during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, raise questions about our freedoms. We have the feeling of being free because we believe we have mastered the machine. We think we make our choices, we think we expose ourselves freely, in reality, we have no control over anything. We are caught in our own trap. We exploit ourselves, we convince ourselves. This form of transparency is less visible and garish than surveillance of China, for example. We don’t need an authoritarian figure, society regulates itself.
Does the revolution necessarily happen through architecture?
Depending on the architecture, lifestyles change. It says things about the society in which we live. Open space has completely changed the way we work. In the offices where I worked, the editing rooms were closed, today they are glazed. There must no longer be any blind spots or spaces where employees can hide. The superior must be able to control everything. We are in a kind of paradox between constant opening and constant closing. Everything is open and closed at the same time. We find this idea in architecture and this way of promoting glass. It is a material through which we see but cannot touch ourselves. It’s the Bentham panopticon where we can watch what’s going on. Today, we are in a digital panopticon. We are both voyeur and exhibitionist in turns. With open space, we can be seen and we can see. Obviously, it changes behavior.
Violence against children, particularly incest, is present in the book. Is this a subject that particularly affects you?
My first novel already addressed these questions. It is one of the great taboos of our societies, even if speech is freed. Transparency is the question of what we see. Incest almost always escapes notice. In the past I worked on fairy tales. And Little Red Riding Hood, typically, says that the wolf may be the grandmother. When Little Red Riding Hood says to her grandmother: “How big your teeth are”… We think that the wolf took the grandmother’s place. In fact, the predator can be the grandmother, the grandfather, the uncle… Fairy tales tell us that those who are close to us can also represent danger, precisely because we look away. There is always this question of gaze when we talk about incest. Society doesn’t want to see it either. In a family, it will always remain unthought and unthinkable.