Short abstract:

This paper tries to address participatory processes by thinking through Clandestine Publics: the mutual entanglement and disturbance of two seemingly contradictory practices and/or goals: making things public and keeping things secret, or clandestine.

Long abstract:

Participatory processes have to do more than figure out ways to reach wider publics: they also need to find better ways to conceal certain things from certain people. This paper tries to address this problem by thinking through Clandestine Publics. The idea of “clandestine publics” (Nowotny 2005) is only at first sight an oxymoron. Making things public is based not only on disclosing, but also on concealing. We understand Clandestine Publics as the mutual entanglement and disturbance of two seemingly contradictory practices and/or goals: making things public and keeping things secret, or clandestine. The term Clandestine Publics helps us link publics to questions of exclusivity, and to explore the subtleties of things that are being hidden, yet communicated. The key idea of this paper is that participatory processes might profit from developing an understanding of Clandestine Publics, and possibly even develop an idea of a Clandestine Participation. In this presentation we will firstly look at some empirical examples: A queer feminist call to illegal action, a secret artwork, and a case of fascist dog whistling. In the second step we extrapolate out of these examples some methodologies of doing Clandestine Publics. In the third and final step we analyse the potential of such methodologies for extended forms of participation.

The Clandestine Publics Research Collective consists of anthropologists, artists, and activists (often in multiple roles).