I found myself playing with Hanks’ metaphor after I read this post. If access to understanding is a form of capital, might secrecy be one token
of this capital? Exchange, giving, receiving, alluding or referring to — if not misfires, all rely on a shared underlying currency.

My addition to Paul’s list is a different form of refusal to share information. Kompromat, from fieldwork among Ukrainian political elites, is “compromising material.” The practice of kompromat consists of collecting compromising material (i.e., material which could be used to blackmail) on an enemy, rival, friend, or ally; and then, when necessary, letting the person know that you have kompromat on them but not letting them know what it is.

Kompromat is a disciplinary practice. The point is to get someone to believe you know their secret sin or malfeasance and, by allusion to your keeping it secret, to induce a course of action or inaction. Persuasion often does not happen through a face-to-face discussion. The holder of kompromat may make his or her possession of kompromat known by a gesture as subtle as the lift of an eyebrow when one’s mistress walks by; or as bold as a press conference at which the existence but not the contents of kompromat are revealed. Kompromat it not blackmail, per se; usually the target is not told what material has been collected.

Kompromat, then, depends on compartmentalization of information and practices in discrete segments of the target’s life; discomfort with the spread of knowledge or information between those segments; vulnerability to collection of information by another; and susceptibility to the provocation of inference that the other person has kompromat. Deployment of kompromat depends on the ability to foster an impression that one has the means and the disposition to collect, and the ability to provoke inference in the target.