It is too simplistic to say that the visible is simply what is seen and the invisible is what is not seen, and this can be seen in how scholars have approached the topic of in/visibility. Within the concept of the visible, there is a partition between what is seen and what is not seen, indeed, visible is beyond what is seen and not seen, as those occupy the visible and something can’t be seen and not seen at the same time. Visibility therefore holds a duality of these two factors.
However, in comparison, the relationship between the visible and the invisible is more subtle than the previous relationship of seen and not seen. It is not in opposition to the visible, but it adds to the visible. Neither is less than the other, as Brighenti says, ‘the invisible is the visible without a theme’[1] and therefore this leads to a discussion on visibility attempting to give a theme to issues of the visible and visibility.
Visibility can be considered to be a social-scientific category[2] depending on the perspective it is approached from, there are social examples of visibility i.e. marginalised groups and scientific, such as what can and can’t be seen in a literal sense. However, there is no singular all-encompassing theory of visibility, and attempts to develop one is a complex one because visibility involves a large domain in which multiple sensory, representational and symbolic meanings and actions intermix.
Visibility is associated with our ability to see and the spatial and temporal factors that surround us, for example, something that is far away can be difficult or unable to be seen by human sight alone unless aided by some device, therefore what is visible is limited by spatial and temporal properties surrounding us, however visibility can be also situational, in that we can see what is in the same spatial-temporal areas as we are, if those are other people for example, we are also seen in return. The various theories and approaches to visibility each have unique and distinct implications and applications to invisible disability, however many theoretical approaches are relatively recent much like our understanding of invisible disability. As such, when it comes to literary and historical studies application of theories of visibility to disability there is little work, and even less when invisible disability is a topic.
Theories of In/Visibility
In/Visibility – Surveillance i.e. Disciplinary Power/Medical gaze
It is only within the last decade that social and political sciences have begun to thoroughly explore the concept of visibility and invisibility, and now everyone can be visible and invisible in some way or another depending on the context. Both visibility and invisibility have their roots in accounts of visual practices and knowledge, for example disciplinary power and the medical gaze (Foucault 73/77) which gives a historically discrete field of view and can aid in defining and identifying subjects in certain spatial and/or temporal locales through associated discursive practices. Through identifying and defining subjects, they are controlled and so it is sometimes also known as the disciplinary gaze. However, the medical gaze is not static, but it is dynamic and can fluctuate and redefine subjects based off alternative forms of surveillance aided by knowledge and understanding[3]. In this way a person’s visibility or lack thereof can change due to different discourses, and thus while visible through surveillance, such as a patient being monitored by a doctor, they are also invisible as certain factors will only be considered as the discourse varies and therefore their visibility as a whole is limited, they are half-visible. In terms of a disability becoming visible and how the medical gaze can control disabled people can be seen in The History of my Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory by Kenny Fries[4], wherein Fries describes seeing a medical professional for a routine medical check-up, as required by the United States Social Security programme when seeking disability benefits. The medical professional doesn’t deal with his everyday healthcare, but instead is a person in authority who can control his access to benefits, much like when people sought Poor Law relief from Poor Law Commissioners in the 19th century. The medical professional reacts in shock when the disability is made visible, and calls in his secretary because he can hardly believe the disability when made visible and by calling in another he others Fries, but Fries describes feeling unable to recoil and cover up because there is a power imbalance and he wishes to retain his disability benefits. Historically people seeking assistance had to expose and make their disability visible and made worthy of assistance from Poor Law Commissioners, the power imbalance means they have to conform to expected behaviours of those with a disability and perform in order to be seen as worthy. The medical gaze or disciplinary gaze controls how they behave and how they are viewed.
On an interpersonal level, the interactions between the disabled and those in power who act as gatekeepers to assistance can involve bias and mistaken assumptions about disabilities, especially because non-disabled people have few conscious encounters with those with a disability, especially an invisible disability. Cultural norms within society shield disability, even when it is present and so many disabled people have to deal with shock and awed reactions when they make their presence known, this also extends to pity with many considering a life with a disability as tragic, indeed it has been used at times to inspire others, also known as inspiration porn and the work of Thomas Mayhew, the London Labour and the London Poor[5] which provided accounts using emotive and descriptive language about disabled people, further “othered” them and used them to inspire Victorian readers.
Mayhew’s inspiration porn employed the genre of travel literature and emotive language and shocking imagery to present disabled people as something morbidly interesting that is in society, yet hidden and which he is discovering.
Not only were disabled people “othered” by their identity, but their location, for example, The Eclectic Review described the London Slums, in which many disabled people lived, as an unknown land[6], creating a sense of adventure and discovery for the reader to venture into a world they don’t know. One reviewer of Mayhew suggested that he travels, “through the unknown regions of our metropolis, and returned with full reports concerning the strange tribes of men which he may he said to have discovered”[7] and according to Thackeray brings back with him,
A picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it; and that the griefs, struggles, strange adventures here depicted exceed anything that any of us could imagine. Yes; and these wonders and terrors have been lying by your door and mine ever since we had a door of our own. We had but to go a hundred yards off and see for ourselves, but we never did. . . . We are of the upper classes; we have had hitherto no community with the poor. We never speak a word to the servant who waits on us for twenty years.[8]
In the case of Thomas Mayhew, and of Poor Law Commissioners, they hold a great deal of power in the interactions, including discursive authority when dealing with disabled people. The Poor Law Commissioners account and understanding of disability can be problematic in regards to the disabled person’s narrative, for disabled people these interactions with people in authority could be seen as subjective and emotional, the person in authority is considered to be rational and objective, however it can hardly be objective when it only has an understanding of disability that is othering.
In/Visibility – Recognition
Recognition can be considered to have its historical roots in the development of a capitalist society which creates a condition in which the self is structured around simulation and performance, creating a blurring of the line between fiction and reality[9].
When building off the work of theorists such as Debord[10] and Baudrillard[11], it is possible to map how the value and worth of an individual has altered historically and moved from how much capital (goods or money) a person has and to how that person is viewed by others, creating what Debord calls the, ‘society of spectacle’. Social recognition is therefore realised through self-specturalisation and visibility. Personal lives can become a form of capital to be shared with others, which further blurs the separation of public and private[12] which can possibly be a way to explain the massive success of autobiographical tales and especially those of illness in the 19th century, in this way the disabled (albeit those of middle or upper classes) were able to use their lived experience as social capital to share with the masses, making the private public and demanding visibility.
Recognition as visibility can also be considered an ethical concept[13] in order for a person to be recognised by others, an often cited example of this can be found in the Invisible Man (1952), a novel by African American writer Ralph Ellison[14], in which the black narrator feels invisible due to segregation and a lack of recognition and is in practice invisible, historically while many who needed care could be looked after in the community, some were institutionalised and segregated, leading to a lack of recognition and therefore visibility.
In/Visibility – Representation
Visibility can also be considered to be representation throughout societal media, for example via pictures and literature and this representation can have an impact on socio-political issues and therefore everyday life, because visibility as representation occurs when, “present in the same spatial temporal setting in order to see the other individual.”[15]
Theories of representation have an interesting history, such as Debord’s view that real life gets lost and hidden behind representation within capitalist society creating a, “society of spectacle.”[16] An example of visual representation could be the 19th century media advertisements of Julia Pastrana was a Mexican native who had hypertrichosis terminalis, which meant she had excess facial and body hair. This condition led to a long career travelling across America and Europe as a performing, ‘freak’ under the names of, ‘Bear Woman’ and ‘Ape Woman.’[17] However, is such representation the equivalent of people seeing or being seen, and therefore is she visible via this version of visibility?
In/Visibility – Social Visibility
The visibility or invisibility of a person can also be constructed by the discourses that surround them[18] for example with social visibility, a term which was first used by Anderson[19]. However, Anderson doesn’t provide an explicit definition for social visibility, but implies that social visibility is something that an individual acquires due to their competencies. At the core of this understanding of visibility is the recognition of those competencies by others in the group, however he is not clear if those competencies must be relevant or advantageous to the group. Geertz then builds upon Anderson to propose three types of social visibility,
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“1. Positive visibility. The individual is perceived by others as furthering the group process.
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Social invisibility. The individual occupies space within the group but is perceived by others as contributing little other than his own presence.
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Negative visibility. The individual adversely affects the group process and his behaviour is perceived as such”[20]
These visibilities are constricted by the discourse that surround them, because these discourse determine which competencies or skills are seen as advantageous or negative to a group of people and therefore if a person brings value to that social group or society, devalues it or is perceived as not contributing anything. Social visibility isn’t based off individual skills being present, but how a person can direct these skills, so if a disabled person and an able bodied person has the same set of skills, the lack of access to a building might mean that the able bodied person is seen as better able to use these skills and has greater social visibility than the disabled person. Therefore, the mere possession of skills does not equate to the acquisition of visibility. In this way, coming out with an invisible disability doesn’t just other a person, but might make them be perceived as less able to use their skills and therefore they run the risk of decreased social visibility, even though this is juxtaposed with the othering that the decreased social visibility brings.
In/Visible – Misreocognition/Misreading
If we consider a human body as a body of text, i.e. an embodied text, from which others can read and understand a person and their place in the world, then misrecognition, can be due to the bodies text being misread and can be a form of violence to the person who is misread as it reduces them and others them, for example, with a disability, the reading of the embodied text, and is demands that, “one give an account of everything, and only thematically”[21] and controls through classification as disabled and other. Through viewing the disabled person and expecting a thematic explanation in order to sort them is an act of violence against them. For example, extrapolating from the Medical Gaze, and which is defined as a way of looking, hearing, smelling, sensing and comprehending the world[22] and providing a lens through which the world is visible, Staring can also be an example of how the lens through which someone views the world becomes a material action, for example, staring can be an example of how being visible can be a form of violence in which the person is othered because of the person who stares world view, Garland-Thompson states that, “staring has an inherent narrative component that the staree must always address in some way”[23]
The othering of staring demands a response from the staree, an explanation of their otherness and can occur when a disability is visible or when it becomes visible. The difference from able bodiedness demands an explanation in a world where able bodied ness is the normative. The explanation, especially for those with an invisible disability can involve a greater response, and therefore performance in order to be taken seriously and get the adjustments they need. However, there needs to be care when extrapolating from the medical gaze, Garland-Thompson explains that while the gaze and the stare have similar societal origins, order to control and normalise bodies, Garland-Thompson uses the example of the gaze women receive when viewed favourably, and the stare when otherness can be read via the body.,
“Feminization prompts the gaze, while disability prompts the stare. Feminization alterations increase a woman’s cultural capital, while disabilities reduce it”[24]
However, recognition can also be approached in another way, Honneth[25] used the prologue of Ralph Ellisons, Invisible Man in which the black protagonist describes his misrecognition and invisibility due to American Segregation,
“No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”[26]
In this case, the narrator is describing, according to Honneth, a metaphorical invisibility, and not that of literally being invisible, it is a social construct and performative because it,
“demands gestures or ways of behaving that make clear that the other is not seen not merely accidentally, but rather intentionally”[27]
As such, this form of visibility occurs through social actions, “that themselves possess the character of a meta-action insofar as they symbolically signal a type of behaviour that the addressee legitimately may expect”[28] and visibility can be seen as a moral affirmation about the value of the other person to those who view them.
In/Visibility – Antagonistic Theories
Social and Political theorists have increasingly been exploring the concepts of visibility and invisibility with some arguing that the concepts are incompatible and antagonistic to each other depending on how visibility is understood for example as a moral framework of recognition in which it is an affirmation of the moral value of a person[29] or power in which ‘visibility is a trap’ through surveillance[30]. However, there is an antagonism between these two elements of visibility, for any marginalised group, in the example from Bhabha, a black man, is overlooked, “in a double sense of social surveillance and psychic disavowal”[31] which showcases the antagonism of being both seen via surveillance and yet experiencing social isolation and stigma.
Visibility as a surveillance has roots in the theoretical work of Foucault who explored concepts of power when, “studying the origins of clinical medicine” when examining, “how the medical gaze was institutionalised, how it was effectively inscribed in social space, how the new form of the hospital was at once the effect and the support of a new type of gaze” [32] While this was initially thought to be a purely medical based problem, it did spread to other institutional settings bringing new understanding to the difference between seeing and being seen.
For example, the Panopticon was an institutional building designed by an English Social Theorist, Jeremy Bentham during the late 18th century. The Panopticon was used by Foucault as an example of the gaze or surveillance (as a type of visibility). In the Panopticon, the building is designed so that all the inmates of the institution can be observed by a single person without the inmates being aware that they are being watched. While it is impossible for a single person to observe every single inmates cell at once, the inmates are not aware of this, and thus act as though they are being watched at all times and therefore regulate their behaviour in order to conform and align with expectations, in doing so Foucault argued that a disciplinary society had arisen in the 19th century and that disciplinary techniques were used to deal with the variety and complexities of humanity and create a society in which people were uniform and docile.
However, those within this surveillance matrix are not without power, and can exert, resit and be the subjects of power because they are active mediators of the gaze, for example, when networks of surveillance move away from the more structured ones of the Panopticon to that of a family caring for a sick loved one, the medical gaze has allowed individuals to become a part of the monitoring of their own bodies and oversee the bodies of others and therefore relay the medical gaze to those around them[33] and this can be seen as far back as the 18th century when parents became identified as guardians for the health of their children[34].
This surveillance of people and them being visible therefore does not provide visibility in the form of recognition, and therefore the term visibility when used can be a complex and antagonistic one. This antagonism is also evident in representation as visibility, Julia Pastrana may have been represented visually through posters and adverts for her show, but this visibility was inherently othering, creating a distance between the person seeing and those being seen, much like the Panopticon, people can view her as a distant other, without themselves being seen, creating a “dissymmetry in recognition”[35] because how she is viewed is not representative of who she is and therefore impacting her recognition as a person, as equal and not as merely other.
However, the adverts and posters for freak shows can be seen as a form of communication media, in which visibility isn’t confined to spatial or temporal confines, a person no longer has to share the same space and time as another to be visible, or to have their actions or an event seen, for example a letter can transmit to another person who is not present in that time or space what is going on for them to witness in real time the event as it transpired in the correspondence. This is also the case when examining a primary source, a researcher can get a glimpse into a person’s life and view what occurred in another’s temporal and spatial locale, such as a diary entry from the 19th century. The difference in this form of visibility is that it is unidirectional, because whereas visibility could be in both directions for the people in the same spatial and temporal locale, when reading a letter or exploring a primary source, those under the gaze of the viewer cannot return it.
Even when Julia was performing in a show surrounded by a crowd of people the crowd is viewing her, much like the overseer, but she is never sure when some individual is watching or arising and thus needs to conform to their expectations (that arise from society and also the visual representations of her adverts). This form of voyeuristic surveillance, such as occurred at shows, prevents true visibility because the true self is not seen, but the expected self.
However visibility as recognition is a minefield, because while Heinich discussed dissymmetry in recognition, their idea of recognition is based off a physical visual representation, other social theories of visibility as recognition move away from such physical ideas, for example, the master-slave dialectic of Hegel in which human self-consciousness doesn’t exist apart from that which is recognised by other humans. Hegel has influenced numerous thinkers and theorists, for example Taylor’s theory of multiculturalism has its roots in the definition of the human self, for Taylor, a person’s identity is shaped through being recognised or the lack of recognition, and through a lack of recognition a person or a group can be impacted negatively, causing distortion to reality of their lived experience which can permeate and impact that lived reality when the society around them reflect upon them expectations or negative stereotypes, misrecognition can therefore, “be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being”[36] which then creates in a person a harmful picture of the self, and thus leads to invisibility.
[1] Brighenti, A.M., 2017. The visible: Element of the social. Frontiers in Sociology, 2, p.17.
[2] Brighenti, A. M. (2007). Visibility: a category for the social sciences. Curr. Sociol. 55, 323–342. doi: 10.1177/0011392107076079
[3] Heaton, J., 1999. The gaze and visibility of the carer: a Foucauldian analysis of the discourse of informal care. Sociology of Health & Illness, 21(6), pp.759-777.
[4] Kenny Fries, The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc, 2007).
[5] Thomas Mayhew, London labour and the London poor Volume III (London: Griffin, Bohn and Company, 1861), in Archive.org, <https://archive.org/details/londonlabourand01mayhgoog/page/n6> [accessed 2 June 2019].
[6] Hiller, M.R., 1994. The Eclectic Review, 1805-1868. Victorian Periodicals Review, 27(3), pp.179-283.
[7] Eclectic Review, XCIV (1851), 424-425
[8] Punch, March 9, 1850, p. 93; quoted in Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty, New York, NY: Knopf, 1984, 350
[9] See Hedges, C. (2009). Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. New York: Nation Books. And Honneth, A. (2004). Organized Self-Realization: Some Paradoxes of Individualization. In: European Journal of Social Theory. 7 (4), 463-478.
[10] Debord, G. (1961/1983). The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red.
[11] Baudrillard, J. (1981/1994). Simulacra and Simulation, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
[12] Le Goff, J-P. (2003). La Démocratie post-totalitaire. Paris: La Découverte, 2002.
[13] See Honneth, A. and Margalit, A., 2001. Recognition. Proceedings of the Aristotelian society, supplementary volumes, 75, pp.111-139. And Honneth, A., 2001. Recognition or redistribution?. Theory, Culture & Society, 18(2-3), pp.43-55.
[14] Ellison, R. (1995). Invisible man. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Pg3
[15] Thompson, J. B. (2005). The new visibility. Theory, Culture & Society, 22(6), 31-51. Pg.35
[16] Debord, G. (1995). The society of the spectacle. New York, NY: Zone Books.
[17] Browne, J. and Messenger, S., 2003. Victorian spectacle: Julia Pastrana, the bearded and hairy female. Endeavour, 27(4), pp.155-159.
[18] Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press
[19] ANDERSON, J. E. The psychology of development and personal adjustment. Holt, 1949.
[20] Clifford, E., 1963. Social visibility. Child Development, pp.799-808. P.800
[21] Derrida, J. (1992). Passions: An oblique offering. In D. Wood (Ed. & Transl.), Derrida: A critical reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Pg25
[22] Foucault, M. (1980). The eye of power: A conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot. In M. Foucault (Ed.), Power/knowledge: Selected interviews & other writings, 1972-1977 (pp. 146-165). New York, NY: Pantheon Books
[23] Garland-Thomson, R. (2006). Ways of staring. Journal of Visual Culture, 5(2), 173-192. Pg180
[24] Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Feminist theory, the body, and the disabled figure. In L. Davis (Ed.), The Disability studies deader (pp. 279-292). New York: Routledge. Pg287
[25] Honneth, A. (2001). Invisibility: On the epistemology of “recognition.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 75, 111-126.
[26] Ellison, R. (1995). Invisible man. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Pg3
[27] Honneth, A. (2001). Invisibility: On the epistemology of “recognition.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 75, 111-126. Pg112
[28]Ibid pg120
[29] Honneth, A. (2001). Invisibility: On the epistemology of “recognition.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 75, 111-126 pg.120
[30] Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London, England: Penguin Books pg.200
[31] Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London, England: Routledge. Pg339
[32] Foucault, M. (1980). The eye of power: A conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot. In M. Foucault (Ed.), Power/knowledge: Selected interviews & other writings, 1972-1977 (pp. 146-165). New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Pg.146
[33] See Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Peregrine. As well as Foucault, M. (1980) The politics of health in the eighteenth century. In Gordon, C. (ed) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 by Michel Foucault. Brighton: The Harvester Press
[34] Donzelot, J. (1977) The Policing of Families. London: Hutchinson
[35] Heinich, N. (2012). De la visibilité: Excellence et singularité en régime médiatique [On Visibility: Excellence and singularity in media regime]. Paris, France: Gallimard.Pg.33
[36] Taylor, C. (1994). The politics of recognition. In A. Gutmann (Ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition (pp. 25-73). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pg.25
PhD Life and Research 