“Hide and Seek”: Severance, an ideal-typical speculative fiction for thinking about secrecy and divulgation["Hide and Seek" : Severance, une fiction spéculative idéaltypique pour penser le secret et la divulgation]

In Severance, employees have their professional and personal memories separated by a microchip, creating two dissociated identities: "innies" and "outies." Through the lens of this science-fiction series as an ideal-typical framework, this article examines the dynamics of secrecy and disclosure, drawing notably on the work of Costas and Grey (2014; 2016). A qualitative analysis of the first season demonstrates how, through a speculative thought experiment, Severance highlights the fragility of formal organizational secrecy mechanisms when confronted with the overlapping of social and informal dimensions. The article also proposes an original actantial model to conceptualize divulgation, distinguishing the roles of discloser, audience, disclosed, and verifier, thereby offering a new conceptual tool to analyze contemporary organizational challenges and real-world phenomena.