On Voice and Anonymity

Anonymity is one of the few non-violent tools available to the relatively weak for use in improving their circumstances.
It is the veil that liberates. It allows at least some few who would otherwise be voiceless to come to voice, to tell their stories, to describe the world as it appears from their vantage point. Sometimes it allows a cat to look at a king – or if that is too optimistic – to at least think out loud about looking at a king, to speculate upon the nature of that glorious visage.

That is why journalists interviewing children seeking asylum who have had to go into hiding do not reveal their names.

It’s also why the Samaritans doesn’t require your identity before they’ll listen to you.
And it’s why, at least in some places, you can report hate incidents anonymously.

One of the beauties of blogism is that it can allow people who are relatively powerless (not absolutely powerless mind you, but relatively powerless) to come to voice without the mediating influence of journalists – be it benevolent, malicious or merely indifferent. And we must recognise that for some, this coming to voice is possible only because of anonymity.

The sixteen-year-old kid living in FredPhelpstown Central who is questioning her sexuality is more likely to bring her voice, her thoughts, into the public sphere if she can do so without the prospect of additional harrassment, violence and the small but not insignificant risk of death that would be attendant on the revelation of her identity.

For the relatively powerful, one’s name is one’s protection. It confers authority, it establishes their credentials. Sometimes it even grants a kind of impunity. For the relatively powerless, however, one’s name is often one’s greatest vulnerabilty. The vulnerabilities associated with one’s name are – to give one salient example – why refugees often lack identity documents.

It may be tempting to say that those who write anonymously just lack the courage to put their names to their words. To say that they simply need to learn to stand up for themselves or else, shut up or change what they say. I’m suspect most of us have seen such claims made in a wide variety of online and offline situations.

My rather brutal response would be: ‘Go tell that to Sophie Scholl.” As it happens, one cannot. She and others in her circle of friends were beheaded soon after their identification. One might, I suppose, make the claim that her interrogation and show trial provided her with a valuable opportunity to learn to stand up for herself: it’s not a case I’d care to make myself. Personally, I would rather she had lived on, along with her brother and friends to continue their work in cowardly anonymity.

Of course, her case is an extreme example. The claim that that it is isolated or exceptional, however, is difficult to sustain in our barbed wire world: Sophie Scholl merely inhabits a position near to one end of a particular continuum of political vulnerability.

In light of current events, I think it would also be useful to remember that even those who are relatively powerful in one context, may nonetheless be relatively powerless in another.

Let me digress a little (or a lot).
There’s an opera by Verdi called I Vespri Siciliani

Verdi was on a bit of a nationalist kick when he wrote it (but was Verdi ever not on a nationalist kick, she says, rolling her eyes?). It’s a political opera about a French invasion of Sicily. In the opening scene we see subjugated Sicilians being menaced by French soldiers, with what – at least in performance – usually involves thinly veiled threats of sexual violence against Sicilian women. Rape has been an established weapon in war for a long time now.

And indeed sexual violence – or more particularly, the ways in which rape is used simultaneously as weapon of war and as justification for war – is one of the main themes that runs through this deeply cynical opera. (At least I read it as deeply cynical)

After a bit of a setup, in which we are told about Our Noble Heroine Elena and the tragic death of her brother, she is introduced to the stage and vows to be avenged for her brother’s death. At the same time, she first encounters the French military, one of whom – an obnoxious individual by the name of Roberto tells her to sing for him. (Again, the staging usually makes plain the pleasure demanded from her voice is sexual)

She refuses. He threatens her with his ‘sword.’ Elena is a pragmatic woman and so she sings.

The other Sicilian women on stage watch intently.

Now this is an important moment: Elena is the most powerful Sicilian woman there is. If she can be raped with impunity (even figuratively) even while wearing mourning for her brother – what is there that cannot be done to those Sicilian women with less power? Whether those women liked Elena is beside the point. The reason they watch so intently what becomes of her is that whatever is done to her can so much more easily be done to them. After all, Elena is a powerful woman.

The purpose of analogy is not to assert identity, but rather to delineate points of similarity and difference. Nevertheless, while I think it important not to confuse that rare beast, solidarity, with the more pragmatic act of supporting someone for reasons of expediency, there may still be occasions when that pragmatic support is both right and necessary.