ABSTRACT
The Buribunks’ obsession with documenting their existence reduces time to a series of ‘rat-seconds’. The past becomes analysable information, rather than a living heritage. The present becomes a data point, rather than an opportunity for action or insight. Perhaps most disturbingly, the future becomes merely a trove of as-yet-unknown information, rather than meaningful possibilities to be pursued with a clear understanding of one’s own finitude. Schmitt’s vision has affinities with Kierkegaard’s verdict on the public; with Nietzsche’s critique of an antiquarianism that fails to serve life; and with Heidegger’s phenomenology of inauthentic temporality and the chatter of the ‘they’. The Buribunks enriches these points of view by exploring how constant, universal publishing would turn subjective experience into objective data. In 1918, buribunkism was a bold extrapolation; in the twenty-first century, hyperburibunkism exacerbates divisions, spreads conspiracies and establishes near-total surveillance. How can we foster liberty, truth, community and authenticity in the information age? I argue that one contributor to a more genuine public sphere must be a counter-practice to hyperburibunkism that I call privacing: the cultivation of experiences that resist publication.
