Discovery transforms its object rather than merely revealing it

Evidence

What the word normally imports is the uncovering or the disclosure of what is already there. In this sense, the word is contrasted to invention, to the creation or inauguration of what was not already there. However, the prefix “dis-” does have a privative force with its connotations of actively denying or undoing a previous condition. What this intimates for discovery is that the thing discovered is now different for having been discovered. It is now denied its “cover” and put in a new scene, one pertaining to the discoverer. If this discoverer claims to be the repository of universal truth, a claim which modern discoverers invariably do make, then discovery in this extended sense can join with its primal meaning and the discovered be now revealed as what they should, in truth, be. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 217

Categorization

• DEFINE: Recovers the privative force of ‘dis-’ to show how discovery actively remakes the discovered — a definitional resource for vault entries on discovery doctrine and racialization.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 217
• XREF: connects to: Discovery logic erases itself within the network of Relation — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 336