secrets

Two of my acquaintance have recently posted on the topic of 'guilty secrets'--in my opinion, one of those posts was more precisely directed at the topic than the other. But no mind. 'Guilty secrets' is an interesting notion, and I'm not so much drawn to write up my own as to just dig a bit deeper into the question: what is a secret? and what drives us to possess them, when we do? and do we have secrets, really, at all?

It's possible that 'guilty secrets', though pleasantly evocative of what makes secrets so interesting in the first place, is redundant. A fact merely remaining unstated to someone or other doesn't constitute a secret, necessarily, does it? It seems that the enforcement of secrets is one way that abusers exploit the vulnerable; a long time ago my sister told me that she's taught her daughter to tell anyone who tries to engage her in a 'secret' to respond: "We don't have secrets in my family." That seems a prudent course, and I've taught my daughter the same. Surprises, we explain, are different from secrets--a surprise is something pleasant that you don't tell the surprisee about until later, because you want to do something nice for them. But secrets? Secrets are troubling ...

All right, so my twist on this is the following: I've also been thinking about something that I first learned about  many years ago (okay, nineteen years ago--satisfied?) in a philosophy of language class ... we had been reading J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words. One of the things Austin brought to the conversation about what language is, and how it does what it does, was the idea of performative language. Some things we say are constative: their function is to express what is. That hound is fat, and old, and ugly, and its breath stinks. Constative utterances can be true or false.

There are other categories of utterances ... I'm not going to be comprehensive here. I've lost some of you already, as it is. In any case, Austin pointed out a category that looks constative in a way, but doesn't conform to the some of the properties of constative utterances. For example: I now pronounce you husband and wife. See here: saying this is what makes it so. An utterance can of itself be an action with a result--in this case, it renders two people married. So that's a property that ordinary constative utterances lack; and a property of constative utterances--that they can be true or false--is lacking in this utterance. It is neither true nor false--its function to enact.

It's too bad I took this course right along the time I was working on the denouement to my ADD crash-and-burn pyrotechnic exit from "College: The First Attempt." Because what follows in my thinking now is either a bold, original extrapolation of this idea of 'performative utterances,' or stunningly obvious and first discussed in depth and then dismissed as trivial by philosophers of language twenty years ago or more. In other words: go easy on me here.

Because it occurs to me that lots of constative statements have performative aspects as well. Why do you think it's a commonplace for someone to ask, "Why are you telling me this?" It must be because the intent to inform is not always (or perhaps even rarely) the sole motive for telling something. We all know this. Disclosing is not merely, innocently informing. When you inform, you stir things up. You change things.

For one thing, you are obliging the other person to know something—she or he must now respond or not respond to the new state of information. Is this all too abstract? Think of it in terms of relationships—early in intimate relationships, even. What about that first 'I love you'? Totally constative utterance, isn't it? Stating it doesn't make it so—presuming it's said truthfully, dollars to donuts a lot of agonies went into the decision to disclose it for the first time. And why the agonies? Because of the performative meaning we attach to being willing to tell someone. Or alternately, supposing that it's said untruthfully: one scenario we associate with this is 'I love you' as a rhetorical utterance that might help a fellow get into a woman's pants. Pretty performative, I'd say.

Back to secrets now. I'm not trying to be sophistic. We know we can't report everything that happens to us in every moment ... when does not telling something that happened, become a secret? Or even a guilty one? How does one know whether there is some tacit agreement not to discuss certain topics—and how does one know when the right time to talk about something arises? Dharma, I guess, says: examine the intention. "Why, exactly, are you telling me this?" Or to oneself: "Why, exactly, are you choosing to remain silent about this, at this time?"

What does 'secret' mean to you?

Comments

[anne]

oooh, good one!

i think a secret is information that you intentionally and willingly withhold from someone without the intention (or even maybe the anticipated willingness) to tell them later. i think a guilty secret is one you withhold because you think the hearer's opinion of you would be significantly and negatively changed by hearing it. so like, the identity of the boy's father is a secret, something i don't tell people and won't tell most people, even if they ask, but it's not a guilty one.

about the tacit agreement stuff i'm not as sure. i think if you aren't sure whether to tell it's better to err on the side of revelation for the people that you expect to love you warts and all (i.e. family, especially siblings/spouses), and to keep your mouth shut in most other cases and particularly if there's a chance of it progressing further (i.e. schoolyard, work).

[vickey]

Wow.
My husband & I are struggling with this one daily. My pregnancy (27 wks) was scary & aweful for 4 mos. - lost triplet at 11 wks, twin at 19 wks - now have one healthy & growing normal baby. I should be able to share my excitement & joy with, say, the women in the prenatal yoga class without traumatizing them with my story - right? They are there to relax. But I feel I am keeping a secret from them. I feel compelled to tell people, even it it will make them uncomfortable. By telling them I am seeking something: A). Sympathy for me. B). Punishing them for their easy pregnancies C). Seeking a genuine level of intimate sharing encouraged by the class. D). Providing a foil by which they realize how lucky they have been in their normalcy. E).Therapy. Not telling them alienates me further, as I paste a smile on my face & nod knowingly about how fun pregnancy is.
For now, mums the word. Troubling is right.

[zeno]

Both Anne and Vickey have it spot on. Whether a secret is a guilty one or not is entirely subjective, if one feels guilt about a particular act it has nothing to do with the observers of the act. Guilt is the sole preserve of the perpetrator. Therefore your opinion of whether a secret is of the guilty species or not makes not a whit of difference to the secret keeper.

In other news, saying "I love you" to get in to a girls pants is not performative, in my experience anyway.

Finally, from a theological viewpoint, God is performative as his every word enacts, "...and god said..." therefore, in the Christian canon, Jesus is performative by his very nature.

[truffleupagus]

after having dropped out of graduate school, I have pretty much done a brain wipe on all this knowledge I used to have, but it seems to me that what you're getting at is a very thoughtful exposition of what Austin called "perlocutionary acts" -- speech acts defined by their effect on the hearer. the idea is that any single utterance can constitute several different kinds of speech acts: if I say "I love you," the basic "locutionary act" is just the simple fact of my physically saying the words, but the "illocutionary act" is that I am making a statement. the "perlocutionary act," though, might be to seduce, to reassure, to shock, etc. etc., but what kind of perlocutionary act it was would depend entirely on context. so if A says "I love you," and B says "Please pass the salt," B's utterance has the illocutionary force of a request, but the perlocutionary force of a bucket of cold water.

as for secrets, hmmm: for me, a fact I know becomes a secret when I believe that someone's opinion and/or worldview would change if they knew that fact, but I don't say anything. if it is a fact that I have a weakness for hostess cupcakes and I don't tell my boss, I don't consider it a secret because I don't believe it'll perceptibly affect his opinion of me. if it is a fact that I suck my thumb (which I promise, it is not!) and I still don't tell my boss, I'd more likely consider that a secret because I believe that his opinion of me would change if he knew it. in neither case is it any of his business, but the thumb-sucking would feel like a secret in the way the cupcake-gobbling doesn't. (of course, if I has been presenting myself as someone who would never sully her digestive system with such garbage, the cupcakes might well be a secret.)

okay, that's meant to be an utterly trivial example. but I also think that vickey's comment speaks exactly to this, in a profound way: she knows that the women's view of pregnancy -- and, also, of her -- will necessarily change if they know her story, so *not* telling them feels like keeping a secret.

I love your blog!

[Philip]

societal interaction is all about the sharing and withholding of information; language facilitates the sharing, but a lifetime of experience teaches us what is important to withhold. The savvy retention of information that would be harmful, painful, or detrimental to others is an important part of character, and has nothing to do with the value of the information we keep, or the feelings this information invokes in us. Guilt is about empathy and putting ourselves in other people's shoes, and shouldn't be viewed as "good" or "bad." Some of the most crass and selfish people in the world feel no guilt because they simply don't care. While others torture themselves needlessly, when in fact, they are showing good character by keeping information to themselves.

Interesting post, Jill.

[Mir]

Had to come back and read this a few times before I was ready to comment.

I wonder how the concept of entitlement comes into play, here. I agree that often there is a notion of a secret changing someone's opinion of the secretkeeper... but (to borrow a previous example), is a boss entitled to know of one's proclivities for processed desserts? Debatable. On the other hand, if I am involved in what is assumed to be a monogamous relationship and I stray, I'd argue that becomes a "guilty" secret because of the presumption of other party's entitlement to be informed that I have "broken the rules."

That's an extreme example. But I think the notion of what others "have a right" to is an important piece of this puzzle.

[Betsy]

And I think sometimes people share guilty secrets precisely to help absolve themselves of the guilt they feel, to get validation that, despite the existence of the secret itself that they are still decent and worthwhile people, or to hear that their 'guilty' secret isn't really something they should feel guilty about (or, in my case, all three.)

It also presumes a responsibility on the part of the secret-receiver to tread carefully when responding to the revelation - as in 'if I'm agonizing over this enough to keep it secret and I'm choosing to tell you, I'm doing so because I trust you enough not to tromp on my feelings with your response, no matter how you might feel about the secret itself.

So it's a covenant that the secret-sharer seeks to enter into with the secret-receiver. And if the secret-receiver doesn't treat it with the same kind of reverence, or feels offended by the presumption of trust when no previous relationship existed? She's left holding this bag of stuff that's impossible to deal with in a forthright and honest way, oftentimes (usually in the latter case) - or doesn't care enough to respect the covenant.

It's a tricky business, this sharing and hearing of secrets. And I keep re-learning that I ought not to tell them if what I'm looking for is absolution or validation or reassurance that I am, in fact, a decent person.

Especially when what I hear after revealing a secret is 'gee, I think that's a lousy thing for a decent person to do.'

[udge]

Hello Jilbur,

made my way here via a comment on Mir's blog long ago. Fascinating post, and a marvellous collection of commenters too. Most impressive. I'll be back!