In:
Theory, Culture & Society, SAGE Publications, Vol. 29, No. 6 ( 2012-11), p. 47-77
Abstract:
This article will take up Deleuze and Guattari’s allusive yet insightful writings on ‘the secret’ by considering the secret across three intermingling registers or modulations: as content (secret), as form (secrecy), and as expression (secretion). Setting the secret in relation to evolving modes of technological mediation and sociality as respectively pocket, pooling, and plasma, the article works through a trio of examples in order to understand the contemporary movements of secrets: the memories of secrets evoked in an intimately interactive music video by the band Arcade Fire (as an example of ‘pocket’); the movements of secrecy turned fabulative in the scopic-doublings of airport full-body scanners (as ‘pooling’); and, finally, the collective secretions that come to saturate and stretch around the globe as expressed by liquidity-seeking financial innovations (providing an angle onto ‘plasma’). These three instantiations of contemporary secrecy are framed by a discussion of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook – truly a couple for our age: each intent, in their own way, upon bringing an end to secrets. Throughout, we try to maintain close attention to the emerging rhythms and dissonances that engage secrecy in a dance between the half-voluntary and the half-enforced.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0263-2764
,
1460-3616
DOI:
10.1177/0263276412444473
Language:
English
Publisher:
SAGE Publications
Publication Date:
2012
detail.hit.zdb_id:
1490738-0
detail.hit.zdb_id:
803302-X
SSG:
3,4
SSG:
10
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