Go figure! Public pedagogies, invisible impairments and the performative paradoxes of visibility as veracity

Abstract

This article asks how public pedagogical texts mobilise particular meanings about whose bodies/minds matter or figure? How do they articulate particular affective investments, desires, and values related to our everyday understanding of invisible and visible impairments, and the ways in which discourses of ‘normalcy’ are taught? The author examines three examples of public pedagogy or media campaigns to educate the public about particular invisible impairments experienced predominantly by women. It theorises how women with invisible impairments are seen to lack veracity in Western visual cultures that both equate and privilege the visible with truthfulness and authenticity. The paper considers, after Agamben, the ‘zones of exception’ created by the in/visible hierarchy for disability rights claims and human rights struggles for women with invisible impairments.

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