Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, 23-24 April 2026
Conference organizers:
Dr Alice Borrego (EMMA Research Unit)
PD Dr Gero Guttzeit (LMU Munich)
Dr Héloïse Lecomte (Sorbonne Université)
Prof Dr Esther Peeren (University of Amsterdam)
https://aihr.uva.nl/content/events/2026/04/invisibility.html?origin=WwlfvMXFR%2F25v%2BlML%2FjsPA
Provisional Program
Thursday 23 April
9:00-09:15 Welcome and Opening by organizers
9:15–10:15 Keynote Kristin Veel, “The Sensing Home: Rethinking In/Visibility and In/Audibility in Infrastructures of Care and Control”
10:15–10:30 Coffee Break
10:30–12:00 Parallel Panels 1 + 2
12:00–13:30 Lunch
13:30–15:00 Parallel Panels 3 + 4
15:00–15:15 Coffee Break
15:15–16:45 Parallel Panels 5 + 6 + 7
16:45-18:00 Book launch of Gero Guttzeit’s In/Visible Subjects: Literary Character and Narratives of Invisibility since the Eighteenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), followed by drinks
Friday 24 April
9:00–10:30 Parallel panels 8 + 9 + 10
10:30–10:45 Coffee Break
10:45–12:15 Parallel panels 11 + 12 + 13
12:15-13:45 Lunch
13:45-14:45 Keynote Claire Davison, “Lest we remember? War, Sound and Sonic Memory in the BBC’s ‘Scrapbook’ Programmes”
14:45-15:15 Closing by Organizers
Invisibility and inaudibility, and their corollaries, visibility and audibility, have become impactful concepts and metaphors across media and disciplines in recent years. This conference aims to take stock of the role they play in shaping and understanding culture in different contexts and historical periods, including, perhaps most urgently, in our current conditions of political polarization and surveillance capitalism.
Inaudibility - as silence - has predominantly been explored as resulting from marginalization. Far from a “passive state of understanding” (Santos), silence can be part of a potent mechanism to create a monopoly of narrative (Le Blanc) that erases cultural, social, and political dissonances. In this regard, inaudibility not only raises the question of how one can make oneself heard, but of how the multiplicity of narratives, of stories, of shared experiences, is muffled by imbalances of power. Silence, the “currency of power” (Achino-Loeb), partakes in the construction of the spectral. Much like being seen requires one to be actually perceived by the other, being heard entails being actively listened to. Inaudibility, however, can also be recuperated as a form of agency: choosing to refrain from speaking, like claiming the right to opacity (Glissant), can be a form of empowerment.