First, there are the politics of visibility: campaigning for structural change in order to recognize a group that has been historically and structurally undermined. And then, somehow it fades into the economies of visibility, an idea termed by Sarah Banet-Weiser.

The economies of visibility shifts the movement so that visibility becomes the end rather than the means to the end. (instead of, “let’s create structural change to give this group of people rights,” it is, “look! these people don’t have rights!”)

But it points to the larger story within our cultural that is happening repeatedly. When a movement of visibility grows, an economy grows around it, and this economy relies on the subject that we are working to free– to not be free.