There are secrets that are kept from the public and there are ‘public
secrets,’ -- secrets that the public chooses to keep safe from itself. The
trick to the public secret is knowing what not to know. This is the most
powerful form of social knowledge.
In the United States the injustices of the war on drugs, the criminal
justice system, and the Prison Industrial Complex are ‘public secrets’. The
public perception of justice relies on not acknowledging that which is
generally known. When faced with massive social problems such as racism,
poverty, addiction, and abuse, it is easy to slip into denial. This is the
ideological work that the prison does. It allows us to avoid the ethical by
relying on the juridical.
Public Secrets provides an interactive interface to an audio
archive of hundreds of statements made by current and former prisoners,
which reveal the many secret injustices perpetrated by the state against
its most vulnerable citizens. Visitors navigate a multi-vocal narrative
that links individual testimony, public evidence and social theory, in
order to challenge the assumption that imprisonment provides a solution to
social problems.
website Public Secrets
website Sharon Daniel
bio Sharon Daniel
The Public Secret (pdf)