"You're Either Anonymous or You're Not!": Variations on Anonymity in Modern and Early Modern Culture

My title is taken from an episode of the US sitcom, Curb Your Enthusiasm. The claim is made by the main character, Larry David (played by the real Larry David), and although it sounds reasonable enough, it is, in fact, as the entire episode reveals, perilously simplistic. Larry utters the fateful words at a gala evening at a research center in L.A., to which he has made a substantial financial donation. On arriving, accompanied by his wife Cheryl (not her real name), Larry is delighted to see the wall blazoned with the words: "Wing Donated by Larry David." His delight is short-lived. As he proudly casts his eyes round the room to see who else is admiring the inscription, his eyes alight on the opposite wall. It says: "Wing Donated by Anonymous."

Larry:

I'm not crazy about that. Now it just looks like I did mine for the credit as opposed, you know, to Mr Wonderful Anonymous.

Cheryl quietly:

I know who it is. It's Ted. Ted is Anonymous.

Larry:

What are you kidding?

Cheryl:

No. Isn't that great? He donated the whole wing, didn't want anybody to know.

Larry, irritated:

Well, he told you, so apparently he wanted somebody to know.

Cheryl:

He told me, ok?

Larry:

Who else did he tell? How do you know he just told you?

Cheryl:

I don't know. The point is he didn't need all the fanfa . . .

Larry, animated:

Fanfare?! What fanfare?! I don't like the fanfare! Are you saying I like fanfare?

Cheryl:

He can tell a few people; he just doesn't need the whole world to know he donated all this money.

Larry, very animated and gesticulating:

You know what? I didn't need the world to know either. Nobody told me that I could be anonymous and tell people. I would have taken that option, ok? You can't have it halfway. You either anonymous or you're not! Which is it?

Cheryl, calmly gesturing to Larry's wing:

Look, people are pointing out, "Look there's Larr . . ."

Larry:

Oh yeah, there's Larry David, the guy who has to have his name up on the wall. As opposed to Mr Anonymous. But who's really Ted.

Cheryl, gently:

I am proud of you.

Larry:

Anonymous! It's fake philanthropy and it's faux anonymity. What do you think about that?

Well, what do we think about that?

Two things immediately come to mind, one concerning social politics, the other, the relative values of speech and writing. Larry discovers too late that having one's name displayed on the wall is a social faux pas, that, as it were, publishing a work with one's name on it is unseemly and vulgar, as compared to anonymous publication, the self-effacing nature of which is far more appropriate and dignified. Moreover, he discovers that his conceptual framework for understanding publication is simplistic: anonymous publication need not, in fact, mean that the author's name is unknown. Ted's name is a kind of open secret: it may not be written on the wall but it is known, and knowledge of it circulates by word of mouth. The relative values of writing and speech depend here (as they also do in, say, Plato) on their ability not so much to disseminate information as to control access to it; writing is inferior on the grounds that it speaks indiscriminately to everyone whoever they are (whatever their name is).² Larry's name is there to be seen by the hoi polloi, while Ted's is available only to a privileged group, and as that knowledge circulates, it establishes insiders and outsiders, those in the know and those not, those who knew before others did. If Larry is so furious, it is not least because he only discovered that the anonymous donor was his "friend" Ted when his wife told him; she knew before he did.

A further issue might also be highlighted: the relationship between...