Interrogating (In)visibilities

Abstract

Critical attention to invisible disability raises interesting questions about the social and corporeal (in)visibility of disability. The article conceptualizes invisible disability in relation to the visible body, while maintaining the category’s ties with social visibility. To explore invisible disability, economies of visibility—originally proposed in black feminist media scholarship—is developed as a lens to explore the connections between (in)visible embodiment and social visibility in media texts. The lens is used to examine the representation of characters with invisible disability and visible disability in the case study of the popular Australian soap opera Home and Away. The examination illuminates economies of visibility as a productive way of grappling with how invisible disability vexes the visual binary of disabled/able-bodied.