Incorporation into spectacle blunts difference and leaves only regulated visibility

Evidence

Now cultural strategies that can make a difference—that’s what I’m interested in: those that can make a difference and can shift the dispositions of power. I acknowledge that the spaces “won” for difference are few and far between, that they are very carefully policed and regulated. I believe they are limited. I know, to my cost, that they are grossly underfunded, that there is always a price of incorporation to be paid when the cutting edge of difference and transgression is blunted into spectacularization. I know that what replaces invisibility is a kind of carefully regulated, segregated visibility. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 277

Categorization

• XREF: Directly builds the toolkit for Islamophobia readings: the mechanism by which marginalized visibility is co-opted and re-policed parallels how Muslim representation is spectacularized while real presence remains circumscribed. Also resonates with Deleuze’s ‘societies of control’ as regulation through visibility. — connects to: Veiling an object produces sublimity while revealing it risks de-sublimation — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 459; Spectacle is money that can only be looked at — Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 62