PostSecret is a website that uploads and displays anonymous postcards that are sent to the website’s headquarters in Maryland. These postcards are normally colourful, and often include images of people or objects. They also incorporate a secret, usually a secret that is brief and compelling. Some secrets are about thoughts or feelings, such as “I hate social media,” while others are about actions, such as “our teachers never gave us gold stars in school, we just made our own”. PostSecret is a form of archive that publicly exhibits and keeps many secrets sent to its headquarters. Although the PostSecret website does not hold all secrets, there is a specific Tumblr account dedicated to capturing and publicly displaying secrets that are posted on the original website. As noted by Carter, “archives are filled with voices,” which is evident in this Tumblr account, which holds thousands of voices. These voices are intentionally and anonymously speaking up.
An issue with PostSecret is that it may not post all of the postcards that it receives. PostSecret has the power to pick and control what secrets it publicly shares, and what secrets stay hidden. By excluding voices from its archives, PostSecret is “silencing” it’s audience (Carter). If certain secrets are excluded from the archive, they will “disappear from history” and not be heard (Carter 217). I argue that PostSecret is “silencing” it’s audience’s secrets in order for secrets to fit into one of two categories: either “Sunday Secrets” or “Classic Secrets”. These two specific categories are consistently posted every Sunday, the day that PostSecret uploads new batches of postcards. Unfortunately, I am unsure of how each secret is selected, and what makes each secret unique enough to fit into either the “Sunday Secrets” category or the “Classic Secrets” category. Perhaps the “Sunday Secrets” are uncommon secrets, while the “Classic Secrets” are more relatable?
PostSecret holds the power to decide which secrets get the honour of being published on their website. Much like other archivists, PostSecret needs to make decisions of which materials to include and exclude, thus automatically silencing individuals who have made a large effort to prepare, create, and send in their secrets (Carter 219). Carter refers to a statement by Verne Harris claiming that archives preserve “a sliver or a sliver of a sliver” of the information they have access to (Carter 221). This concept may apply to PostSecret, as the website normally uploads approximately 35-45 postcards weekly, and most likely receives more in the mail.
Through this work of PostSecret as a “silencing” archive, individuals will better understand how “silencing” can be a powerful tool to tell stories through a specific lens, and how PostSecret is biased, and may not acknowledge many of its resources. This concept of the “power in silence” can be extended beyond archives and serve as a reminder that everyone is inherently biased, and that people can either exaggerate the truth or deliberately “silence” themselves (Carter 215).
Work Cited
Carter, Rodney. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence.” Archivaria 61, 2006. pp. 215-33.
PostSecret. WordPress, https://postsecret.com/. 9 Apr. 2018.
PostSecret Archives. Tumblr, http://psarchives.tumblr.com/. 9 Apr. 2018.