Privates on Parade

I've been ruminating quite a bit on the notions of 'public' and 'private' since my last post, particularly as I am writing a paper to present at a conference (DPR8 'Power and the Academy' Manchester 6-8 April http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/dpr/). My paper asks 'what is needed if we are to re-imagine the academy?' and assumes the desirability of public spaces in which new knowledge is produced. However, what I did not appreciate when submitting my abstact was just how complex the notion of 'public' has become. Digital technologies have both expanded and fragmented meanings of 'public' so we live in an age of a 'global public' and also of 'intimate publics' (to borrow Lauren Berlant's term). This has added a whole new layer to my thinking on 'what's in a name'. It's also why I picked the title of this post (originally of a stage play and film - a satire not a 'romp') because it too has many layers of meaning (beyond the more obvious double entendre), and epitomises the situatedness of those meanings. How would such a title have been read, for example, in the 1940s? Or by someone whose first language wasn't English? Or for whom the term 'Carry On....' is incomplete? But what I found particularly pertinent was the allusion to what is revealed/revealable and when and where and by whom. Is the notion of global/intimate the same as public/private or does the former override the latter? And where does secrecy come into it? I have always had problems with 'secrecy' but had largely managed to resolve these by putting a clear conceptual boundary between 'secrecy' and 'privacy'. So with reference to my names I have no desire to keep them secret but I do want to keep them private (and in part this means I reveal them when, where and to whom I decide). However, the shifting lines between public and private are impacting on a distinction that has long served me well and I am being harried out of my comfort zone. No bad thing.