PUBLIC SECRETS.
The widely-observed degradation of the public sphere in the ‘Western democracies’ has been accompanied by a proliferation of secrecy and secrets of different types. From the ‘privatisation’ of social life to the worrying trend towards unaccountable government, sites for the public legitimation of sh...
| Published in: | Cultural Studies Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 22 - 42 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Jan2007
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=23331979&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 23331979 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09502386 05G jtl: Cultural Studies issn: 09502386 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan2007 vid: 21 iid: 1 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 23331979 10.1080/09502380601046923 ppf: 22 ppct: 20 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 117KB tig: atl: PUBLIC SECRETS. aug: au: Gilbert, Jeremy su: Public sphere Civil society Secrecy Privacy Manners & customs Economics Philosophy Solipsism Cultural studies sug: subj: Public sphere Civil society Secrecy Privacy Manners & customs Economics Philosophy Solipsism Cultural studies keyword: community democracy Derrida Nancy public sphere secret ab: The widely-observed degradation of the public sphere in the ‘Western democracies’ has been accompanied by a proliferation of secrecy and secrets of different types. From the ‘privatisation’ of social life to the worrying trend towards unaccountable government, sites for the public legitimation of shared knowledge are in decline while the knowledge economy makes various kinds of ‘secret’ knowledge (software source codes, for example) incredibly valuable. Derrida's reflections on ‘the secret’ provide a useful way in to thinking through the connections between these issues, but it is never entirely clear that he succeeds in his stated aim of rescuing his ‘taste for the secret’ from the obvious charge that it is complicit with a solipsistic logic of privatisation (in every sense of the word). This observation opens up the possibility of a dialogue between Derrida, Levinas, Critchley, Arendt and Nancy around the question of community and relationality which highlights a tension between the potentially individualistic implications of a strand of Levinasian philosophy on the one hand, on the other the commitments of thinkers such as Nancy and Arendt to a thought of irreducible relationality and Cultural Studies’ historic commitment to a practice of public politicisation of previously ‘private’ (indeed, ‘secret’) areas of human experience. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Cultural Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Cultural Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2007 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|