Stampnitzky, L. orcid.org/0000-0003-1187-3176 (2020) Truth and consequences? Reconceptualizing the politics of exposure. Security Dialogue, 51 (6). pp. 597-613. ISSN 0967-0106
Abstract
Secrecy, especially state secrecy, has taken on increasing interest for scholars of international relations and security studies. However, even with interest in secrecy on the rise, there has been little explicit attention to exposure. The breaking of secrecy has generally been relegated to the role of a mere “switch,” whose internal workings and variations are of little consequence. This article argues that exposure is a significant process in its own right, and introduces a new conceptualization of exposure as a socially and politically constructed process, one that must be “thickly described” if we are to understand how it occurs and has effects. I differentiate the process of exposure into two distinct aspects, reserving the concept of exposure to refer to releases of information, while introducing the concept of revelation to refer to a collective recognition that something has been exposed. The first part of the paper explores existing understandings of secrecy and exposure to demonstrate why a new framework is needed, while the second part applies this framework to a case study of the exposure of the use of torture in the post-9/11 U.S. “war on terror.”
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2019. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Security Dialogue. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Exposure; revelation; secrecy; security; torture; transparency |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number LEVERHULME TRUST (THE) RF-2017-121\8 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 10 Dec 2019 11:39 |
Last Modified: | 04 May 2021 11:49 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/0967010620904576 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:154392 |