NOISE Summer School 2019: Politics of In/Visibility

• How can we (feminist, queer, antiracist scholars and activists) identify, analyse and challenge in what ways power relations constitute and define who and what is visible or remains invisible in the public, political and social sphere?
• What are the (different) implications of being invisible or becoming (hyper) visible in terms of identities, subjectivities, memories and communities?
• How can we envision possible feminist strategies to make visible and knowable subaltern voices, struggles and experiences, while being wary of Foucault’s reminder that “visibility is a trap”?
• How can we account for the affective and political dimensions of our academic, activist and artistic positioning when engaging in the politics of in/visibility?

Various theorists have compellingly elaborated upon the interconnections between visibility, knowledge and power. What is made visible and what is left invisible, in processes of knowledge production as well as in the public arena, is entangled with, if not determined by, normative ideas and political forces, frequently reproducing homophobic, ethnocentric and racist discourses, as well as gender inequalities. As feminist scholars have pointed out for decades, this unequal distribution of representation, wealth, privilege, and social and political agency and recognition takes place along intersectional power dynamics structured by, for example, gender, race, class, mental and physical dis/ability, sexuality.