Postmodernism | Paper #2 | Prof. Bay |October 24, 2017
~the “not-sees” paper~
Disclosure provides the opportunity for things to, “show themselves, or to come to light” (Hekman 92). This is different from exposure in the sense that one might draw back a curtain or flip on a light switch to reveal something that has been there all along. Instead, disclosure acknowledges that things “push-‐‑back” and participate in their coming to light in in the sense that it operates as, “an intra-‐‑action between knowledge and the world” (91-‐‑92). Understood this way, disclosure should also not be confused with the construction of reality; rather, it is like an enacted tool that bridges the gap between the way things are represented and its given materiality. Although disclosure carefully avoids appealing to objective reality, it still holds that there actually is a result—something does come to light—and it is the material consequences of one configuration over another that allows for comparison and disagreement (93). Disclosures depend on being disclosed and how they are disclosed, but consequences of disclosure are material and measurable so disclosure is not simple relativism.
One particularly empowering feature of disclosure is how it can bring dichotomies that privilege neither discourse nor materiality (while acknowledging them both) into social ontologies. This is a way of both acknowledging difference, but also seeing beyond binaries. Here, it’s possible to step away from social constructivism without stepping away from language all together. As a feature of experience, this opens us to a kind of inward richness, but when situated within shared social experience; the ways we perceive it; the ways we speak discursively about it; and the kinds of knowledge claims we make about it, disclosure becomes socially potent.
Ahmed recounts a story about Claudia, who as a little girl, receives a little white baby doll as a Christmas present (41). The adults in the scene “cluck” about how cute the doll is as they attempt to attune Claudia to handle the doll with love and care. Employed as a “technique of power,” the socializing force of “attunement matches an affect with an object” (41). Here love and compassion (both of the adults, and presumably Claudia) should pair with the doll. Within social contexts, attunement is a powerful way of suggesting how one ought to disclose the world, and the more commonly a particular disclosure is made, the less likely it is to be challenged in terms of its material consequences—widespread disclosure can become conflated with objective reality itself This is precisely the trap Hekman wants to avoid!
But resistance always finds a way; despite intense pressure to attune, Claudia “destroyed white baby dolls” (Ahmed 41). After all, “comfort is about the fit between body and object,” and the chair that fits my body comfortably might be insufferably awkward and uncomfortable for your differently shaped body, just as Claudia’s doll doesn’t feel right for her (123). The problem in drawing attention to these different disclosures is that in speaking up against the standard disclosure, resistant speakers themselves become the problem. Difference drawn where no difference was [noticed] before isn’t just drawing attention to difference, it becomes difference. Drawn sharply and quickly enough, difference snaps (188). Apprehension is demanded! Snap says “see me now!”
Enacting snap can be heroic; however, queer history is not only interested in “finding heroic models,” but also in locating “contradictory and complicit narratives (Halberstam 148). Halberstam’s “antidisciplinary” investigation into the collaboration and points of unity between homosexuals and Nazis is a particular kind of disclosure—a specific disclosure made by observing the same facts with a different perspective. Yes, Nazi’s murdered gay men, but they also loved gay men; they were gay men. This disclosure is profound not only because it allows the undeniable conjunction of homosexuality and Nazism to come to light, but at the same time allowing the phenomenon of repressed collective perception to come to light.
What is the difference between forgetting, not knowing, and refusing to perceive? Even if the felt experience is the same, what is the difference in terms of material consequences? Something being invisible is not the same as it not existing.
One tactic deployed when confronted with an exceptionally strong or repulsive message is to refuse to acknowledge it. Similarly, if one were tacitly in accord with the unpopular message, but wished to avoid overt support, one might choose to appear ignorant, or choose to “not-‐‑see” the offense. Building designers and event organizers might choose to not see ablest design limitations in constructed spaces and programmed events. Presidents of nations and universities might choose to not see hate speech and racist propaganda as such, and instead, shield malice behind the veil of free speech. To intentionally overlook [or tacitly support] lack of consideration or outright offense [particularly to escape objectionable consequences] is none other than to disclose it. Oedipus’ disclosure of unknowingly committing patricide and incest could apparently only be dealt with by refusing to see it indefinitely. People like these, whom I’ll call “not-sees” for short, engage in disclosure just as much by what they refrain from as by what they performativity do.
“Not-sees” are real-‐‑live subjects in the real-time contradictory and complicit historical narrative we intra-act with moment by moment. As persons who engage in the co-creation of subjects, not-‐‑sees deny those they marginalize their very existence. It’s not that the not-see says there is no problem, but rather by forcing this warped view of not-seeism into discourse and material existence, they posit that there is not even the appropriate subject in existence who could experience such a problem. Unlike the material violence of fascist regimes, discursive not-sees perpetuate and participate in asymmetric power relations through the imposition of discursive disclosures intentionally framed in such a way that precludes debate or further discourse.
Self-imposed shortsightedness cannot negate the lived experience of those who see—those who can do none other than to see. Disclosure is not relativistic and need not affirm the co-created observation of not-sees because this plurality of observations “gives us something to compare: we can weigh the material consequences of one configuration over another” (Hekman 93). Objective reality can remain in a state of perpetual question, but material consequences cannot. Where some refuse to see, I humbly request a microscope. And if there are obstacles in the way, then I’ll also take a periscope, please. Between here and the horizon, which to follow first--the line of flight or the line of sight?