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As evident in the other entries in this index, secrets are often alluring, charged and productive. The claim that someone possesses a secret can excite attention and imagination.
Scholars that examine secrets in science, culture and everyday social life often refer to them as ‘paradoxical’– paradoxical in that ‘it is in the very nature of secrets that they get told’.[1]
In one interpretation, this quote signals the way in which secrets are not entirely hidden. Even if a government ministry wants to set up a secret facility in the middle of the dessert, such places cannot exist without some markers of their existence, and those traces can be followed out.[2]
In another interpretation, the sharing of secrets is paradoxical because the act of sharing goes against the notion that the secret should not be disclosed. Thus, those discussing secrets routinely offer justifications for why it is appropriate to divulge them. Too, the telling of secrets is often accompanied by instructions (…but don’t tell anyone else). From classroom gossip to off-camera media briefings, the meta-instructions accompanying disclosures can mean that knowing how to keep secrets means knowing how to share them.
How to share is closely connected with who to share. The Latin root for the English word ‘secret’, secretus, meant ‘to separate’ or ‘set apart’. The potential to set apart is not simply or even necessarily determined by the content of what is restricted. To understand this potential, we must consider the attachments and commitments associated with being ‘in the know’ (or not) and being 'kept in the dark’ (or not).
For instance, imprecise disclosure agreements in place within science policy forums, such as the Chatham House Rule, both mark limits for disclosure, while simultaneously enabling participants to exchange otherwise sequestered information. But more than this, such rules are bound up with the formation of trust. This Rule serves as a compact between those present, one that, through its very open-endedness, defines participants as members of a group that can be trusted to act appropriately without being told exactly what appropriately means.
As a result of the kudos of being seen in the known, the existence of secrecy (if not the content of secrets) is often paraded (see the Revelation entry). When pressed as to how they can continue to use controversial cluster bombs given their humanitarian impacts, government officials can repeatedly allude to state secrets as refuting the claims of critics; even if the substantive content of such secrets are not disclosed. When it later becomes clear that no such alluded to information ever existed, then the performative power of ‘contentless secret’ in the machinations of statecraft becomes appreciable.[3]
The intertwining of concealment and disclosure are evident in the associated word of ‘secrete’. Secrete refers to acts of releasing and hiding.[4] The bringing together of opposites is also evident in the linked term, ‘transparency’ (see Transparency entry). Making something transparent can refer both to making it see-through, as well as making it readily apparent.
In part because of the way in which telling and sharing, concealment and revelation often come packaged together in secret keeping, examining secrets purely for their hidden content (see the Secret Formula entry) can be intellectually limiting. What is also needed is an appreciation of the situated enactment of secrecy.
[1] Bellman, B (1981) The paradox of secrecy, Human Studies, 4: 1.
[2] As accomplished in Paglen, T. (2009) Blank Spaces New York: Dutton.
[3] Rappert, B. (2012) How to Look Good in a War: Justifying and Challenging State Violence. London: Pluto: Chapter 3.
[4] Taussig, M (2003) Viscerality, faith and scepticism, in B Meyer and P Pels (eds) Magic and Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.