When George Floyd was brutally murdered in front of all of us and his killers ignored his desperate and repeated pleas of “I can’t breathe,” the pain, anger, and (dis)illusions accumulated by so many generations during centuries of social injustice exploded around the world. And they have continued to be expressed in multiple ways – although some have tried to make them invisible again.
In this book I discuss the rise of the (in)visibilization society. A new social order, and in particular a new stage of capitalist societies that has been developing during the current neoliberal phase. However, its historical foundations are clearly far more remote. It is in fact embedded in the national and international (in)visibilization order that has been taking shape since the early phases of capitalism. The society that we are living in today is thus the result of the accumulation and expansion of multiple (in)visibilization practices, means, and structures created in those early days of capitalism and developed further over the course of time. During the neoliberal era, however, they have been updated in an even more (in)visible manner. Old and new forms of social (in)visibilization, such as slavery, paid work, care work, food insecurity, extractivism, and multiple forms of segregation and incarceration are now overlapping and coexisting alongside “infinite” possibilities of communication and (over)consumption that are taking place within analog and digital(ized) spaces. Thus, old and new forms of social (in)visibilization are being (re)produced within and beyond labor markets, a trend that is being manifesting today in multiple crises – such as in the care sector, people’s physical and mental health, housing, labor markets, incarceration, politics, and the environment.
To date, numerous authors have developed different sociological concepts of society, many of which I will refer to in this book. However, they have systematically not addressed either social (in)visibilization as a central social logic that organizes contemporary societies nor its politics – thereby making them invisible.
In this present work I seek to complement these concepts of society from a critical perspective on capitalism, by proposing a novel one: the (in)visibilization society. Concretely, I will argue that capitalist societies have historically relied on multiple practices, means, and structures of social (in)visibilization that allow “the visible” to devalue “the invisible,” i.e., human beings along with nature/the environment, making them (im)perceptible to others in order to ensure value extraction, that is, their exploitation.
However, over time social (in)visibilization has been unfolding in a more complex manner. Especially now during the neoliberal age, capitalist societies have multiplied their (in)visibilization means and consequently their practices and structures in a more contradictory way (at least at first glance). This has created a twisted reality that has so far mostly ensured the (re)production of capitalist societies – despite the devastating socio-ecological consequences for both human beings and the environment.
Today, though, we have reached a point in which old and new practices, means, and structures of social (in)visibilization not only coexist but are also being reshaped. Capitalistic expansion and accumulation are thereby not only dynamized and deepened nationally and globally but are also being increasingly challenged. This contradictory dynamic seems to be a consequence of at least two interconnected trends: first, the massification of icts, particularly the internet, smartphones and social media; and second, the increasing interrelation between social (in)visibilization and (audio)visualization.
Since the covid-19 pandemic, this contradictory dynamic and the rise of the (in)visibilization society has become ever more evident. Historical domination relationships and resulting social inequalities have become visible but also rapidly oppressed by the visible using all their means. Nevertheless, the killing of George Floyd, the resulting global protests, and the multiple conflicts that have since become visible, are revealing the new challenges but also possibilities of and between (in)visibilization and (audio)visualization.
Social (in)visibilization has thus become, more than ever, a “politics of social (in)visibilization,” that is, daily and manifold social conflicts that are taking place within and between analog and digital spaces. As a result, a social order formed over centuries is now visible as a “new” one: the (in)visibilization society.
How and why are societies making so many human beings and the environment invisible, while they are today simultaneously developing and expanding