Securitization has a complex and generative relationship to publicness. A fuller understanding of this relationship requires a better understanding of how secrecy mediates the relationship between security and publicness. This commentary highlights recent sociological work on secrecy and suggests that Simmel’s reflections on the charms of secrecy and the drama of revelation offer some promising guidelines for theorizing secrecy’s place in the milieu of security.
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BelcherOMartinL (2013) Ethnographies of closed doors: conceptualising openness and closure in us immigration and military institutions. Area45(4): 403–410.
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CollS (2014) The unbllinking stare: the drone war in Pakistan, The New Yorker, 24 November.
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FoucaultM (1997) What is enlightenment? In: RabinowP (ed) Michel Foucault. Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. New York: New Press, pp. 303–319.
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GalisonP (2005) Removing knowledge. In: LatourBWeibelP (eds) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 590–599.
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KuA (1998) Boundary politics in the public sphere: openness, secrecy, and leak. Sociological Theory16(2): 172–192.
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MascoJ (2006) The Nuclear Borderlands: the Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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PaglenT (2010) Goatsucker: toward a spatial theory of state secrecy. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space28: 759–771.
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PozenD. (2010) Deep secrecy. Stanford Law Review62: 257–340.
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ShawIAkhterM. (2012) The unbearable humanness of drone warfare in FATA, Pakistan. Antipode44(4): 1051–1578.
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SimmelG. (1906) The sociology of secrecy and of secret societies. American Journal of Sociology11(4): 441–498.
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TaussigMT (1999) Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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ThompsonJB (2000) Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age. Cambridge: Polity.
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WaltersW (2014) Parrhesia today: drone strikes, fearless speech, and the contentious politics of security. Global Society28(3): 277–299.
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WeberM (1946) The power position of bureaucracy. In: GerthHMillsCW (eds) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 232–235.
