The Fabric of Secrecy (original) (raw)
Related papers
New Formations, 2015
In re-igniting a familiar debate about the balance between state security and individual privacy, the revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have stalled on matters of regulation and reform, which treat secrecy, securitisation and surveillance largely in procedural terms. This article seeks to interrupt the containment strategies of communicative capitalism/democracy evident in these debates by configuring secrets as subject to and the subject of radical politics rather than regulation. Its premise is that we might be better able to form a radical political response to the ‘Snowden event’ by situating the secret within a distributive regime and imagining what collectivities and subjectivities the secret makes available. Through a consideration of artworks by Trevor Paglen and Jill Magid - which help us to stay with the secret as secret, rather than foregrounding the more individualistic notion of privacy or moving too quickly towards revelation and reform - the article turns from a hermeneutics of the secret towards an aesthetics of the secret. Considered as a Rancièrean ‘distribution of the sensible’, a delimitation of space, time, the visible, the sayable, the audible, and political experience, this aesthetics can help us to imagine a politics of the secret not bound to policy and legalities.
An article about the necessity for secrecy in initiatory ritual. First published in Philalethes magazine. Vol. 63, №2 · Spring 2010.
Draft Programme: SPIN Colloquium 2024: How secrecy (re)makes the world
2024
Secrecy, or at least the perception of secrecy, has transformed the world in ways that have been radically under-appreciated, minimised, overlooked and even consciously erased. This colloquium therefore invites contributions from scholars interested in understanding and tracing the multiplicity of ways in which secrecy, and associated ways of 'unknowing', have shaped the world around us, from everyday to planetary scales. Secrecies, as we contend, are far more pervasive both historically and today than currently understood. They operate, for instance, beyond the narrow or 'thin' view of secrecy as 'tool' of statecraft. Instead, secrecies shape identities, social relations, cultures, economies, political institutions, and security landscapes. This colloquium therefore welcomes scholars from across disciplines – including but not limited to Anthropology, Criminology, Cultural Studies, Education, History, International Relations, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and the trans-disciplinary areas of Surveillance Studies, Intelligence Studies, Secrecy Studies, and Agnotology -- to share their thoughts and research on how secrecy (re)makes the world. Together, we will hear different disciplinary perspectives on key concepts, ideas and challenges of working ‘against the grain’ in relation to secrecy, ignorance, knowledge, and information and the way in which secrecy (re)makes the world.
The Necessary Relativity of Secrecy
2013
This paper is an inquiry into alchemical secrecy. It explores ways in which secrecy serves transformation and how this service calls into question assumptions about teaching, learning, and cultural development.
Introduction: navigating secrecy in security research
2020
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a rich set of analyses of the challenges of secrecy in security research, and sets out practical ways to navigate, encircle and work with secrecy. It aims to offer not just a conceptual reflection on the dynamics of secrecy, but also practical, hands-on methodological guidance for qualitative fieldwork in the security domain. The book describes new ways of conceptualising secrecy in relation to fieldwork, by understanding secrecy as more than a barrier to be overcome. It shows how secrecy itself can be made productive to the analysis: mapping secrecies and sensitivities in the field can itself be revealing; navigating obfuscation is co-productive of research design and data. The book focuses on reconceptualising secrecy as a complex practice and mode of power