Anna Curzon Price (based on her conversation with Rashidat Fredrika Animashaun)

Underlying my initial interpretation of “Hidden figures” (this week’s theme) was a pretty simplistic narrative. I knew the story I wanted to write: hidden figures need to be revealed – through inculcation into the mainstream, power structures are challenged and we move towards a less racist and less sexist society.

I wanted Rashidat to provide me with a few figures whom I could actually write about and lament unfairness of their erasure from history. But what actually ensued was a far more interesting discussion which complicates this narrative. Here are some thoughts which the conversation triggered.

This is a record of the pictures and themes which I – from my position as a white female in Cambridge – found most interesting from our discussion.

Clearly I am not making any claim of being in a position to be able to truthfully represent experiences which Rashidat was trying to convey to me. Instead, I hope to use this article to provoke thinking about the different things which hidden-ness and visibility do, the different ways in which power structures make visible and hide, and the way in which resistance, too, is dependent on the negotiation of visibility and invisibility.