Finalist, French-American Foundation Translation Prize In an age
that prizes political and personal transparency, In Defense of
Secrets champions the secret as what permits relation and ensures
our humanity. Psychoanalyst and philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle
drowned in 2017 in an attempt to rescue two children caught in the
ocean. Her work lives on, though, in this provocative and necessary
book. Through etymologies and case studies, personal history and
incisive commentary on contemporary society, In Defense of Secrets
returns us to the fundamental psychic scene of the secret. The
secret, for Dufourmantelle, is not a code to be cracked or a
firewall to be penetrated but a dynamic and powerful entity that
permits relation and that ensures our humanity. Tracking the secret
though art and literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and
sociology, from the Inquisition to the present, Dufourmantelle's
writing spirals around the question of the secret's value. In our
age, when political and personal transparency seem to be prized
above all-lives posted on the Internet, information leaked,
whistles blown, taboos absent except with respect to the secret
itself-In Defense of Secrets champions what remains hidden,
private, veiled, hushed, just out of sight. The secret is on the
side of nature, not science; organic growth, not technology; love's
generosity, not knowledge's grasp. For Dufourmantelle, the secret
is a powerful and dynamic thing: deadly if unheard or misused,
perhaps, but equally the source of creativity and of ethics. An
ethics of the secret, we can hear her say, means listening hard and
sensitively, respecting the secret in its secret essence, unafraid
of it and open to what it has to say.
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