On Georg Simmel's Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies

Georg Simmel (1858 - 1918)

 

 

I. 

 

One of the founders of German sociology at the beginning of the 20th-century, Georg Simmel mainly interests today for his concept of purposeful concealment - a concept via which he attempts to revalue the notion of secrecy.

 

According to Simmel, when conceived in a positive and profound sense, secrecy enables life to unfold on an imaginatively far more complex plane than it otherwise would and this makes secrecy one of the "greatest accomplishments of humanity" [1]. 

 

Simmel also argues that what most characteristically defines (and differentiates) human social structures is the degree of mendacity (and ignorance) operating within them. The concealment of truth, therefore, is perhaps more vital than its exposure; secrets and lies are what hold us together (this is true even for married couples who like to believe otherwise).   

 

Anticipating Byung-Chul Han, Simmel recognises that complete transparency between individuals - if such a thing were ever to be possible - would not, therefore, be particularly desirable; it would certainly not be without consequence, radically changing how people relate to one another and live collectively [2].

 

In an essay published in 1906, Simmel also offers some fascinating remarks on the attraction of the Geheimgesellschaft ...  

 

 

II.

 

 

We can define a society as secret when its activities, inner functioning, and membership are all shielded from public scrutiny. Secret societies may even attempt to conceal their very existence, for, as Simmel notes, invisibility is an effective protective strategy. 

 

If readers are wondering why individuals might feel the need to take such measures, it's worth noting that secret societies often emerge "as a correlate of despotism" [3] and one of their key functions is to offer protection against the State for dissidents and heretics of all kind. 

 

As well as teaching how to become-imperceptible, secret societies are also highly effective at instructing members on the art of silence, which is a good thing in my view (indeed, I think it would be an excellent idea if our schools taught children how to sit still, sit straight, and stay silent; i.e., taught self-discipline, rather than encourage self-expression) [4].

 

Having said all this, Simmel is aware that some secret societies that start out as countercultural, ironically end up reproducing the oppressive structures and institutions of the wider society that forced them into the shadows or underground in the first place.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies', in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jan. 1906), pp. 441-498. The line quoted from is on p. 446. The essay is available on JSTOR: click here.

 

[2] See my three-part post on Byung-Chul Han's book The Transparency Society (2015): part one can be accessed by clicking here. 

[3] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies' ... p. 472. 

 

[4] Three cheers for Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and head teacher of the Michaela Community School, Wembley. 

 

 

Essentially, this post might be seen as a kind of preview to a paper entitled 'In Defence of Isis Veiled and in Praise of Silence, Secrecy, and Shadows', that will be presented at Treadwell's bookshop - 33, Store Street, London, WC1 - on Thurs 7 September. Further details can be found on the Torpedo the Ark events page: click here. 

    

Readers are also reminded of a related post entitled 'In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets' (14 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets

Anne Dufourmantelle (1964-2017)

 

"To become an occult philosopher is to choose the shadows; 

to cross over to a secret world ..."

 

 

I. 

 

For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the name, Anne Dufourmantelle was a French philosopher and psychoanalyst, perhaps best known for her work on the vital importance of living dangerously. 

 

When, in 2017, she drowned attempting to save two young children caught in rough seas, the obituary writers couldn't help (sometimes spitefully) recalling the fact that she had published a book entitled Éloge du risque [1] just a few years prior to this tragic event. 

 

As her English translator - Steven Miller - notes, the implication was that Dufourmantelle was somehow the author of her own fate [2]; that her death served to confirm the ancient idea that to philosophise is to learn how to die and thus only practiced - like occultism - by disturbed individuals. 

 

Even if true, this tends to downplay the fact that Dufourmantelle was a courageous woman who wrote a number of books - including one on hospitality in collaboration with Jacques Derrida [3] - who wished to think risk not as an act of madness or deviant behaviour, but in vital (and ethical) terms.

 

To quote Miller: "the horizon that orients her approach to risk is not death and sacrifice [...] but rather what she calls not dying" [ne pas mourir]" [4] - i.e., having the courage to live whilst at the same time loving fate. 

 

It's a shame, therefore, that unthinking journalistic accounts of her death reproduce "the very paradigm of risk that she explicitly seeks to displace" [5]. But then of course, news editors are never going to let philosophical subtlety get in the way of a good story.   

 

 

II.

 

Dufourmantelle, however, wasn't just a woman who dared her readers to take risks - particularly the risk of opening themselves up to otherness and to intimacy - she was also a defender of secrets and it's this aspect of her work which currently most interests, engaged as I am in writing my own defence of Isis veiled [6].

Originally published in 2015, Défense du secret was translated into English by Lindsay Turner and published by Fordham University Press in 2021. 

 

As with her earlier book - In Praise of Risk - there are bits I like (the philosophical musings) and bits I don't like (the psychoanalytic observations). But that's just me - other readers will love the latter and hate the former.

 

Like Dufourmantelle, I also believe that in an age obsessed with exposing everything to x-ray vision - Byung-Chul Han famously speaks of the transparency society - secrecy might have an important role to play as part of a counter-narrative which also includes terms such as silence, solitude, and stillness. 

 

It's not that the secret is necessarily some kind of hidden truth - it might simply be a forgotten memory, an unspoken thought, or even a lie. But it is something that has a relation to truth and it is something we should revalue, I think, as a term of opposition to the see-all, tell-all, know-all ideology of today.     

 

But the problem, for a writer, is how does one speak of secrecy without giving the game away? The answer, as Dufourmantelle demonstrates, is to speak quietly and enigmatically; to murmur in a voice that is lighter than breath, or to whisper with the lights down low, as it were. 

 

Indeed, we might even dim the lights completely - for isn't darkness the custodian of being and isn't it the case that, ultimately, it is not we who keep secrets safe, but secrets that safeguard us and our right to become other (to be more than we seem) ...?           

Again, like Dufourmantelle, I would place the secret beyond good and evil - that is to say, align it with individual ethics rather than a universal morality. It's up to every one of us to nurture their own secret identity (or alter ego) - just like Superman and the Scarlet Pimpernel; to cultivate the darkness, as it were, so that we in turn might grow and blossom (like flowers).        

 

I don't think that Dufourmantelle's work - or my own forthcoming defence of Isis veiled - amounts to a religious call, as some suggest. Rather, it simply offers an occult perspective on contemporary culture and brings a little mystery into the social order. 

 

And, who knows, it just may lead to a new mode of relating to one another (less transparent, less open, but richer and more intense), which, in turn, might allow us to leave behind the society of transparency and build - for want perhaps of another phrase - a secret society which has what the German sociologist Georg Simmel called purposeful concealment as its structuring element.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Anne Dufourmantelle, Éloge du risque, (Editions Rayot & Rivages, 2011), translated into English by Steven Miller as In Praise of Risk, (Fordham University Press, 2019). 

[2] See Steven Miller's Introduction - 'The Risk to Reading' - to Dufourmantelle's In Praise of Risk. This can be read online (thanks to Amazon) by clicking here.

[3] Of Hospitality, Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, trans. Rachel Bowlby, (Stanford University Press, 2000). 

[4] Steven Miller, 'Translator's Introduction: The Risk to Reading' ... See link above in note 2.  

 

[5] Ibid.

[6] A paper entitled 'In Defence of Isis Veiled and in Praise of Silence, Secrecy, and Shadows' will be given at Treadwell's bookshop - 33, Store Street, London, WC1 - on Thurs 7 September. Further details will be made available on the Torpedo the Ark events page in due course. Essentially, this post might be seen as an (unofficial) preface to the paper, or a kind of preview.