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Towards Critical Research on Invisibility

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Book cover Invisibilization of Suffering

Abstract

In this chapter, it will be asked how the struggle between visibilization and invisibilization engages in a struggle against social suffering.

Several insights taken from critical theory will be applied. First and foremost, we must understand the research on invisibilization as consequently dialectical. This is not only true on an ontological level, where visibilization and invisibilization, underlying structure and appearance are always related. It is also true on an epistemological level, where we can always make visible only some aspects. Attempts to show the full picture must necessarily fail. We can only aim for related fragments that illuminate formerly dark spots in the landscape of our knowledge. Dialectics as “the consistent sense of nonidentity” also must be the guiding principle for the methodological approach.

The need to lend a voice to suffering is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject; its most subjective experience, its expression, is objectively conveyed.

Adorno (1973: 17f)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Conversely, people can feel empathic when thinking of animals (or even things) as having a human essence. However, this type of empathic understanding is more an empathic misunderstanding, as we falsely confer human characteristics upon those who do not have this type of characteristic. In other words, although we can imagine the experience of being in the body of a dog, we cannot feel how it is for a dog to be a dog.

  2. 2.

    Another, also highly remarkable, aspect of racist and antisemitic (but also other) discourses is that they often play with the supposed censorship. Thus, it is quite common to claim a certain rebellion against “political correctness,” “the media” or the “establishment” by saying something while claiming at the same time that the social order does not allow individuals to say what was just said. Formulae such as “breaking the silence” refer to such supposed rebellious speech acts.

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  1. University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Benno Herzog

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Herzog, B. (2020). Towards Critical Research on Invisibility. In: Invisibilization of Suffering . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28448-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28448-0_3

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