Clare Birchall is reader in contemporary culture in the English department at King’s College London. She is author of Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data (Minnesota, 2018) and Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip.

"Clare Birchall offers an innovative way out of tired debates over secrecy, transparency, and privacy. Radical Secrecy challenges our assumptions about the state, the neoliberal subject, and data, and it invites us to think about the hard but necessary concepts and strategies that can help us deal with our present and our future."-Mark Fenster, author of The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information"In this provocative, interdisciplinary, well-researched, and cogently argued critique and reconceptualization of the relationship between secrecy and transparency in the digital age, Clare Birchall articulates the need for reimagining and experimenting with new forms of transparency and open distribution of data, including the ‘digital right to opacity.’ As we witness political responses to events such as COVID-19, domestic terrorism, and economic devastation, the prescience of her analyses and the importance of her conclusions are undeniable."-Cynthia Stohl, University of California, Santa Barbara

• ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Transparent Times, Secret Agency, and Data Subjects1. The Changing Fortunes of Secrecy and Openness2. Information Imaginaries3. Opaque Openness: The Problem with/of Transparency4. Shareveillance: Open and Covert Government Data Practices5. Aesthetics of the Secret6. Secrets of the Left: A Right to OpacityConclusion: Toward PostsecrecyAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

Clare Birchall is reader in contemporary culture in the English department at King’s College London. She is author of Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data (Minnesota, 2018) and Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip.

"Clare Birchall offers an innovative way out of tired debates over secrecy, transparency, and privacy. Radical Secrecy challenges our assumptions about the state, the neoliberal subject, and data, and it invites us to think about the hard but necessary concepts and strategies that can help us deal with our present and our future."-Mark Fenster, author of The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information"In this provocative, interdisciplinary, well-researched, and cogently argued critique and reconceptualization of the relationship between secrecy and transparency in the digital age, Clare Birchall articulates the need for reimagining and experimenting with new forms of transparency and open distribution of data, including the ‘digital right to opacity.’ As we witness political responses to events such as COVID-19, domestic terrorism, and economic devastation, the prescience of her analyses and the importance of her conclusions are undeniable."-Cynthia Stohl, University of California, Santa Barbara

• ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Transparent Times, Secret Agency, and Data Subjects1. The Changing Fortunes of Secrecy and Openness2. Information Imaginaries3. Opaque Openness: The Problem with/of Transparency4. Shareveillance: Open and Covert Government Data Practices5. Aesthetics of the Secret6. Secrets of the Left: A Right to OpacityConclusion: Toward PostsecrecyAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

Clare Birchall is reader in contemporary culture in the English department at King’s College London. She is author of Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data (Minnesota, 2018) and Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip.

"Clare Birchall offers an innovative way out of tired debates over secrecy, transparency, and privacy. Radical Secrecy challenges our assumptions about the state, the neoliberal subject, and data, and it invites us to think about the hard but necessary concepts and strategies that can help us deal with our present and our future."-Mark Fenster, author of The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information"In this provocative, interdisciplinary, well-researched, and cogently argued critique and reconceptualization of the relationship between secrecy and transparency in the digital age, Clare Birchall articulates the need for reimagining and experimenting with new forms of transparency and open distribution of data, including the ‘digital right to opacity.’ As we witness political responses to events such as COVID-19, domestic terrorism, and economic devastation, the prescience of her analyses and the importance of her conclusions are undeniable."-Cynthia Stohl, University of California, Santa Barbara

• ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Transparent Times, Secret Agency, and Data Subjects1. The Changing Fortunes of Secrecy and Openness2. Information Imaginaries3. Opaque Openness: The Problem with/of Transparency4. Shareveillance: Open and Covert Government Data Practices5. Aesthetics of the Secret6. Secrets of the Left: A Right to OpacityConclusion: Toward PostsecrecyAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex