Navigating the unknown: Towards a positive conception of anonymity

Abstract

Talk of anonymity floats freely and, in many contexts, rampantly in everyday, nonphilosophical discourse. But despite a surge of interest in anonymity-in anonymity protections, on the one hand, and anonymity harms and abuses, on the other-it is not at all clear what anonymity is. Is it simply a matter of being unknown? Or is anonymity something more, or less, than this? Unfortunately, existing analyses frame anonymity very generally as a phenomenon of unknowability and/or concealment. Consequently, they fail to capture what distinguishes anonymity and anonymity relations from, for example, privacy and privacy relations. In this paper, I explore a more precise way of articulating anonymity, developing what I call the central anonymity paradigm, which frames anonymity as the result of a specific exercise of control in which true pieces of information about a person are concealed from others with an effect of dissociability. I use this paradigm to show how anonymity is characteristically interpersonal and network-relative, and deeply connected to issues of personal identity. © 2013 The University of Memphis.