Disappearance as Grievance… or as an Act of Resistance?

Our world invites us to excel in ways that our forefathers not so long ago deemed impossible. However, how much of that engagement acts as an eraser for our narratives, as we sketch them in thick and dark scrawls given our anxieties about the future?

In this salon we examine one way we deal as people with such anxieties: by disappearing.

Highly regarded classics like Ellison’s “The Invisible Man” consider invisibility as an act of systematic aggression by those who wield power over others, or as in Atwood’s short story, as casual disdain over such groups.

Moreover, to resist invisibility is a choice, and itself may be a mechanism for exit or self-reassurance to foil the “flash, a blink, and then be heard no more”, as described by Anna Gát.

Yet, lest we shuffle our mortal coil, if we take the stance to exit and disappear, we have to go somewhere. In the worst cases, we take the path of the jouhatsu or hikikomori.

But what are other alternatives? Can we disappear to pursue happiness in virtual worlds? Wouldn’t that be an abdication of the moral dimensions of our shared humanity as beings who wrestle in touch, as famously argued by Shylock in his description of the world as a place of pricks, tickles and poison?

• Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Alfred Hirschman
• Exodus to the Virtual World, Edward Castronova
• The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
• Death by Landscape, Margaret Atwood
• https://annagat.substack.com/p/on-not-disappearing

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