Black/Female/Body Hypervisibility and Invisibility

Abstract

Through an interdisciplinary lens, this paper proposes two concepts for Black feminist analysis (visibility and hypervisibility) to augment feminist leisure scholarship. We examine questions of invisibility in relation to the systematic oppression that besets Black women in society, and in the academy, through their absence as research participants and researchers. This raises a new sense of invisible marginality that may exist in scholarship, and otherwise. With hypervisibility in body politics, Black women are represented in stereotyped and commodified ways throughout leisure spaces and scholarship. The critique of historical and contemporary representations of hyper-visibility is conducted through representations of Black women's bodies. We conclude with specific implications as Black feminism provides a culturally congruent epistemology to advance the field and augment third wave feminism.

KEYWORDS:

• Black feminism
• womanism
• Black studies
• body politics
• racial identity