Is Visibility a Trap (Door)? Gender, Race, and the Stakes of Representation

This course examines key theoretical debates surrounding the fraught political and epistemological potential of visibility and representation. Who gets to set the premises for recognition, and how do sexuality, gender, and race affect the ways in which representation is granted or disciplined? What is the relationship between historical (in)visibility and futurity, or between media representation and the neoliberal rhetoric surrounding 'diversity'? If visibility is, in some senses, something 'one cannot not want' in Spivak's famous words, then how do we hold onto critiques of racial capitalism's spectacularization and pinkwashing in the face of yearnings for 'better' images of abjected groups? Can we locate a trap door in visibility's trappings? This course takes a comparative approach by drawing on theoretical work across cinema and media studies, queer and trans* theory, and Black and postcolonial studies, with special attention given to recent interdisciplinary scholarship as well as literary works that engage these questions. Readings will include works by Gayatri Spivak, Lee Edelman, Kara Keeling, Jacques Derrida, Jordy Rosenberg, Laura Mulvey, Saidiya Hartman, José Esteban Muñoz, C. Riley Snorton, Hortense Spillers, Michel Foucault, Eliza Steinbock, and Jasbir Puar. In addition, the course will have a mandatory screening component that will introduce students to a range of media objects to think with and against.