Strictly Confidential Anthropology: Post-Truth, Secrecy and Silence in Society and Academia in Hungary

Kürti, László (2021) Strictly Confidential Anthropology: Post-Truth, Secrecy and Silence in Society and Academia in Hungary. ETHNOLOGIA POLONA, 42. pp. 79-97.

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Abstract

Anthropological interest in secrecy and silence – and in related aspects, such as lying, knowledge, memory and forgetting – has been both long and ambivalent. Through what may be called personal anthropology, in this article I describe both private and professional anthropological experiences including family memories, fieldwork sites and academic practices. By recalling state socialist ideology, censorship and family secrets, I illustrate how citizens have relied on each other in order to counter state hegemony. I highlight how surveillance in Romania expressly encouraged my informants, as well as the secret police, to engage in mutual intelligence and observation as evasive tactics. Building on these strategies, I argue that Hungarian academic life is not immune to secrecy, silence and covert action. I introduce an anthropologist who worked for the Hungarian secret police, and consider how academic life continues to rely on covert programs and an institutionalized hierarchy to promote and maintain its structures and interests.

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