The performance of secrecy

Domesticity and privacy in public spaces

Bibliographic Data

ID4473685
AuthorsM Herzfeld (0000-0002-8080-2542, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume2009
Issue175
Publication date2009-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSemiotica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-1998 • E-ISSN: 1613-3692
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/semi.2009.044
OpenAlexW2019030079
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited22

Secrecy, paradoxically, is a social fact; as such, it must be performed in order to be realized. This article is a programmatic attempt to explore the semiotics of secrecy as revealed through the interaction of architectonics, spatiality, and social interaction. Gestural secretiveness reproduces socially sanctioned patterns of concealment also embodied in the built environment; these social dimensions also inform local interpretations of legal devices designed to guarantee privacy. On the international stage, moreover, they are transformed into devices for the concealment of potential national embarrassments. As the author demonstrates using materials from Greece, Italy, and Thailand, the practical effects of secrecy - a more flexible construct than the dichotomy of public and private - are revealingly inscribed, at various concentric levels of social identification, on the material landscape of inhabited space, and represent a necessary dimension of adapting urban structures to a human scale

Inscribed figure · Invisibility · Public space · Law in Society and Culture · Public Spaces through Art · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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