The (In)visibility of Systemic Victimisation. A Reading of Rupa Bajwa's The Sari Shop

Paul Klee's famous and thought-provoking adage that art does not represent the visible but makes visible what is not, best explains what is meant by the term (in)visibility. The literature and art play a crucial role in providing cultural visibility to "facts" and "situations" routinely veiled or concealed in order to uphold a certain ideology and status quo. Literature has the power of enlightening the attitudes and values presiding over socially codified behaviour, as well as the power of showing "the unsaid" in certain regimes of truth, and "what goes without saying" in the politics of representation. The concept of regimes of truth has strong implications for the discussion of both victimisation and trauma. Fassin and Rechtman proposes trauma can create "new language of the event", beyond psychiatric vocabulary and into everyday usage, literature has an important role in illustrating and promoting better understanding of the conditions of traumatised as well as in shaping the moral language of empathy.