Becoming Anonymous

Abstract

AbstractAlthough anonymity is a central feature of democratic participation—for example in the secret ballot—democratic theory has been surprisingly quiet on this matter. This chapter explores anonymity in voting, campaign funding, masked protest, pamphleteering, graffiti, and online debate. It generates the first concept of anonymity rooted in democratic theory. Anonymity rearranges democratic space by interrupting the established order of things through interfaces such as masks or computer screens. This spatial rearrangement generates a channel from private into public space. But anonymity does not always have democratic effects. Rather, anonymity affords three sets of contradictory freedoms: inclusion and exclusion, subversion and submission, honesty and deception. Anonymity is always liberating—freeing the subject to express its multiple self. This freedom is, however, used in both constructive and destructive ways. Anonymity appears as inherently ambivalent. The chapter explores the effects of anonymity in various empirical examples including the hacktivist collective Anonymous, the Ku Klux Klan, Pussy Riot, the US constitutional debate, and bathroom graffiti. Anonymity’s ambivalent effects are highly context dependent. They are shaped by the communicative infrastructure, the power relations between participants, and the configuration of identity knowledge.