Being seen fully and accurately by others is important for individuals in academia. By being visible, people feel able to achieve personal growth and fulfillment, while feeling a sense of belonging within the institution. As societal and institutional norms typically reflect norms held by dominant social groups, minoritised academics often encounter tokenism, which according to Buchanan and Settles (2019) can be associated with visibility issues such as invisibility or hypervisibility. Thus issues of visibility reflect and reinforce social hierarchies within an institution.
Tokenism
Tokenism is the act of reducing individuals’ worth to their capacity to act as representatives of their social group to bolster the appearance of diversity within an organisation. When an individual is viewed as a token this influences their level of visibility in the workplace.
Invisibility
Invisibility is “a state or condition where an individual is not fully recognized and valued.” Minoritised individuals who are perceived as invisible lack appropriate recognition within academia. This can manifest as a lack of representation in policies and practice, oversight of scholarly contributions, or seeing marginalised people as stereotypes instead of fully realised individuals.
Hypervisibility
In contrast, hypervisibility is “the state of being extremely visible.” For minoritised individuals, this extreme visibility can combine with existing stereotypes to create a perception of deviance. Hypervisibility can then lead to increased surveillance where mistakes (real or perceived) are used to uphold pre-existing stereotypes and justify poor treatment.
Invisibility and hypervisibility can differ between individuals of the same minoritised group. When one individual is made hypervisible in a way that eclipses other members of the same group, this is known as tokenism.
How do issues of tokenism, invisibility and hypervisibility affect whose voices are heard? To explore this part of the exhbit first select an aspect of visibility (tokenism, invisibility and hypervisibility). You can then hover over the quotes to trigger animations: some of the quotes may be harder to find than others!