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Abstract
Hidden in plain sight, under the radar, or behind the scenes are people who strategically choose to conceal parts of their identity, their locations, or their life situation. Strategic invisibility resists an oppressive environment by disengaging from it until new possibilities arise. Not powerless but strategic. Distinguishing between culturally imposed invisibility and invisibility that involves agency, this paper presents brief personal stories suggesting the best strategic option in certain circumstances is invisibility and the rejection of the social and public spheres. Using Hannah Arendt's delineation of the public, social, and private spheres to position labor, work, and action, strategic invisibility is seen in six stories: a tenured faculty member, a mentally ill woman, an immigrant family, a group of refugees, a child living in subsidized housing, and a man who lives in a tent by the river. In these examples, invisibility is a choice, however brief, for the purpose of safety and privacy. It is strategic and communicates awareness and adaptability. It is an act of agency, albeit small and with limited scope, but possibly the first step toward a stronger act of resistance to an inhospitable dwelling place.
Notes
[1] Arthur Bandura, “Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective,” Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 1. Theorizing that people do not just experience events but they accomplish tasks and goals, Bandura identifies four core features of human agency: Intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness.
[2] See Martha Luz Rohas-Wiesner, and Maria DeVargas, “Strategic Invisibility as Everyday Politics for a Life with Dignity: Guatemalan Women Migrants'' Experiences of Insecurity at Mexico's Southern Border,” in Thanh-Dam Truong, Des Gasper, Jeff Handmaker, and Sylvia Bergh (eds.), Migration, Gender and Social Justice (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2014).
[3] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), 167/210.
[4] Heidegger, Being and Time, 69/99.
[5] Hannah Arendt, The life of the mind (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1978), 19.
[6] Arendt, The life of the mind, 34.
[7] Arendt, The life of the mind, 38.
[8] Ruth Simpson and Patricia Lewis, Voice, Visibility and the Gendering of Organizations (London: Palgrave, 2007); Patricia Lewis and Ruth Simpson, “Kanter Revisited: Gender, Power an (in) Visibility,” International Journal of Management Reviews 14 (2012): 141–58. Simpson, Ruth, and Patricia Lewis. 2005. An investigation of silence and a scrutiny of transparency: Re-examining gender in organization literature through the concepts of voice and visibility. Human Relations 58, no. 10: 1253–75.
[9] Valerie Stead, “Learning to Deploy (in)Visibility: An Examination of Women Leaders'' lived experiences,” Management Learning 44, no. 1 (2013): 70.
[10] Neve Gordon, “On Visibility and Power: An Arendtian Corrective of Foucault, Human Studies 25, no. 2 (2002): 132.
[11] Henry A. Giroux, “Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,” College Literature 33 (April, 2012): 174.
[12] “Indigenous Peoples Major Group Reaction to Zero Draft: UN Sustainable Development Goals and Post-2015 Development Agenda,” 24 (June 2015). Available online at http://www.iwgia.org/images/stories/sections/envir-and-devel/sust-development/docs/IPMGReactiontoZeroDraft.LongForm.pdf
[13] See the United Nations website at http://www.un.org/press/en/2014/gashc4106.doc.htm for a report on the Millennium Goals. “United Nations ‘Largely Invisible' in Millennium Goals Era, Indigenous Peoples'' Knowledge, Traditions Key to Sustainable Future, Third Committee Told” (2015).
[14] Marco Rubio, “When you're invisible every representation matters: Political edition.”(May 2015). Available online at http://nativeappropriations.com/2015/05/when-youre-invisible-every-representation-matters-political-edition.html
[15] Janice Brown, “New Hampshire's Native Americans: Hiding in Plain Sight,” Blog: CowHanpshire. www.cowhampshireblog.com (2006). A similar report is found in Stephanie M. Schwartz, “The Arrogance of Ignorance: Hidden Away Out of Sight and Out of Mind,” Blog published: www.SilvrDrach.homestead.com/Schwartz_2006_Oct_15.html (2006): 7.
[16] Ilana Feldman, Refusing Invisibility: Documentation and Memorialization in Palestinian Refugee Claims. Journal of Refugee Studies 27 no. 3, (2008): 498–516.
[17] Anderson J. Franklin, “Invisibility Syndrome and Racial Identity Development in Sychotherapy and Counseling African American Men,” The Counseling Psychologist 27 (6, 1999): 761.
[18] Derrick Tovar-Murray and Maria Tovar-Murray, “A Phenomenological Analysis of the Invisibility Syndrome,” Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development 40 (2011): 24–36.
[19] Gordon, “On Visibility and Power,” 137.
[20] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 176. Arendt has a heartfelt passion for the importance of the public sphere but does not reflect on the barriers to entry in this work.
[21] Arendt, The Human Condition, 71.
[22] Gordon, “On Visibility and Power,”
[23] Gordon, “On Visibility and Power,” 129.
[24] See Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Present-at-hand and ready to hand are two different ways to encounter a material entity. The same entity at different times may be useful or useless. See also Abraham Mansbach, Beyond Subjectivism: Heidegger on Language and the Human Being (Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing, 2002); Kris McDaniel, “Heidegger's Metaphysics of Material Beings,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXXXVII, 2(2012): 332–56. doi:10.1111/phpr.12000.
[25] Arendt, The Human Condition, 22.
[26] Arendt, The Human Condition, 8. She emphasizes the role of speech and action as “coeval and coequal” and the precursor to thought. This is important in her understanding of visibility and appearance in the public sphere.
[27] Dean Hammer, “Hannah Arendt, Identity and the Politics of Visibility,” Contemporary Politics 3 4 (1997): 321. doi:10.1080/13569779708449937. On p. 334, Hammer credits Arendt with the notion of visibility and the recognition that nonpublic identities are necessary for appearance in any public sphere
[28] Arendt, The Human Condition, 73.
[29] Elizabeth Frazer, “Hannah Arendt: The Risks of the Public Realm,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 12, no. 2 (2009): 203–23, doi:10.1080/1398230902892093
[30] Arendt, The Human Condition, 38. As an example she points to Rousseau who spoke “not against the oppression of the state but against society's unbearable perversion of the human heart.” 39.
[31] Lisbeth Lipari, “Listening, Thinking, Being,” Communication Theory 20 (2010): 348.
[32] Arendt, The Human Condition.
[33] Arendt, The Human Condition, 8.
[34] Arendt, The Human Condition, 81. Basing her theory on activity in ancient Greece she explores the role of slaves to distance the citizens from bodily necessities.
[35] Arendt, The Human Condition, 8.
[36] Frazer, “Hannah Arendt: The Risks of the Public Realm,” 205.
[37] Hanna Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 146.
[38] Heidegger, Being and Time, 165.
[39] Ruth Simpson and Patricia Lewis, Voice, Visibility and the Gendering of Organizations (London: Palgrave, 2007).
[40] Arlene Kaplan Daniels, “Invisible Work,” Social Problems 34, no. 5 (December 1987): 403–15.
[41] As cited in Neva. Gordon, “On Visibility and Power: An Arendtian Corrective of Foucault, Human Studies 25, no. 2 (2002): 137.
[42] Ronald C. Arnett, Janie Fritz-Harden, and Leeanne Bell, Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (Los Angeles: Sage, 2009).
[43] Arnett, et al., Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (Los Angeles: Sage).
[44] Lisbeth Lipari, “Listening, Thinking, Being,” Communication Theory 20 (2010): 357.
[45] Louiza Odysseos, “Constituting Community: Heidegger, Mimesis and Critical Belonging,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 12 (March, 2009): 53.
[46] Frazer, “Hannah Arendt: The Risks of the Public Realm,” 215. Frazer acknowledges that crossing over into the public realm may be easy for some and require a total transformation of body, expression, and communication style for others.
[47] Patrice A. Keats, “Multiple Text Analysis in Narrative Research: Visual, Written, and Spoken Stories of Experience,” Qualitative Research 9, no. 2 (2009): 182.
[48] Lee Ann Fujii, “Five Stories of Accidental Ethnography: Turning Unplanned Moments in the Field into Data,” Qualitative Research 15, no. 4 (2015): 526.
[49] David Trigger, Martin Forsey, and Carla Meurk, “Revelatory Moments in Fieldwork,” Qualitative Research 12, no. 5 (October 2012): 513–27.
[50] Katia Campbell, “Hyper-visibility and Alienation: An Analysis of Discursive Practices that Challenge Cultural Identity and Belonging Within the Academy,” Manuscript in preparation, Communication Arts and Sciences, Metropolitan State University of Denver (2014).
[51] Andrea Elliott, “Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows,” New York Times (December, 2013).
[52] Lynn M. Harter, Charlene Berquist, B. Scott Titsworth, David Novak, and Tod Brokaw, “The Structuring of Invisibility,” Journal of Applied Communication Research 33, no. 4 (2005): 307.
[53] Audrea Elliott, “Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows,” New York Times (December, 2013).
[54] Allison Glock, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Inside the Life of an Undocumented Immigrant,” The Oprah Magazine, http:/www.oprah.com/world/What-Its-Like-to-be-an-Undocumented-Immigrant-in-America (April 2012), 3.
[55] Glock, “Hiding in Plain Sight.”
[56] Glock, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” 3.
[57] Rohas-Wiesner, and DeVargas, “Strategic Invisibility as Everyday Politics.”
[58] Rohas-Wiesner, and DeVargas, “Strategic Invisibility as Everyday Politics,” 208.
[59] Campbell, “Hyper-visibility and Alienation.” This is a brief excerpt from Katia Campbell who shared this with me orally and then wrote this as a Personal correspondence July 12, 2013. She is expanding her story of her experience for a publication.
[60] Rebecca Bonugli, Janna Lesser, and Socorro Escandon, “The Second Thing to Hell is Living Under that Bridge: Narratives of Women Living with Victimization, Serious Mental Illness, and in Homelessness,” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 34 (2013): 831.