Description
Feminist theorising has a long history of thinking through secrecy. This work however is often implicit and contained within ongoing conversations around the division of the public and private, the silencing, invisibilisation, and marginalisation of women’s voice, labour, and knowledge, and the relegation and sequestration of women and sexuality to the intimate and domestic sphere, which is nonetheless publicised and policed when deemed transgressive. The histories of women’s persecution and gender-based violence, as well as the struggles for greater rights are also intertwined with secrecy. Therefore, to better understand the interconnections of role of secrecy within crisis and (dis)order requires, as this project contends, a reclaiming of feminist theorising and its insights into the role of gender and sexuality in (re)making the world through secrecy. Feminised subjects have a troubled relationship with secrecy as a force and it is this relationship that this paper sets out to interrogate. To do this, this paper proposes first, to undertake a re-reading of three key strands of feminist theorising to better understand the relationships between secrecy and (dis)order. Second, it recovers the longer history of the development of a specific transgressive feminine subject, the suspicious feminine (femininum suspectum) that inhabits different abject figures in Anglo-American history. Third, it brings these insights into conversation with secrecy studies. Bringing these strands together, the paper offers a three-part framework for understanding gender and secrecy, inequality and disorder.
