No there is not, apart from nullifying the highlighting face, like
Jambunathan said.
Transient Mark Mode is a conflation of three disparate behaviours:
1/- Highlighting the region.
2/- Sort of "narrowing" to the region for certain commands.
3/- Disabling the mark and region's functionality except when it's
enabled.
3 is what the minor mode is named after, yet 3's behaviour is usually
nullified by setting the option `mark-active-even-if-inactive'. That is,
setting that option makes the region always usable. So naming 1 and 2
"transient-mark-mode" is pretty silly, now.
1 and 2 can not be separated from eachother. This is bad design, as there
are people who want 2 without 1.
> Regards,
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).