Dysclosure, the openness to the multiple

TLS October 24, 2014

from Jean-Pierre Boulé's review of David Caron's The Nearness of Others: Searching for tact and contact in the age of HIV:

Self-disclosure lies at the heart of Caron's book. The argument is accessible, but also intellectually sophisticated and convincing. Caron's experience has taught him that coming out as HIV-positive means exclusion from the gay community at large, hence the paradox of being closeted as HIV-positive. However, the author starts to rethink disclosure, outside of regimes of truth, policing and control (references are made to both Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière) so that contact between the directly affected and the indirectly affected is possible. He coins the term "dysclosure", "closure vulnerable to dysfunction", as a mechanism for sharing, premissed on equality. In response to questions about one's status, he suggests the answer "undetectable" (referring to one's viral load) as an exemplar of dysclosure because it deconstructs the binary system of enclosure/disclosure. "Dysclosure, the openness to the multiple, is located between confession and silence".

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