Abstract

This dialogue between a psychoanalyst and a specialist in information ethics deals with the relationship between secrecy, language and memory in the information society. The first part addresses the present debate on privacy and the Internet from a psychoanalytic perspective , taking into consideration the relationship between language and memory. The second part deals with the concept of secrecy with regard to oblivion and censorship in the context of the digital network as a space in which seemingly anyone can tell anything to everybody. The question of "what cannot be said" is posed from a psychoanalytic perspective. The third part explores the relationship between memory and secrecy. Secrecy is defined as a "dispositif of exclusion." The concept of "information society" is contrasted to a "society of secrecy". This strategy opens a debate about the question of secrecy in the information society that might also help to disambiguate this concept when applied to concrete situations and spheres in which the question of where to draw the line arises