SPIN was delighted to host the book launch for Professor Brian Rappert‘s latest book, Revelations: A Sociology of Uncovering. The book explores the practice of revealing what was previously hidden and the profound societal implications of such revelations. For more details and to purchase the book, visit Revelations: A Sociology of Uncovering.
Prof Brian Rappert
Interlocutor: Ana Flamind (Groningen)
Chair: Dr Clare Stevens (Cardiff)
Revelations attempt to make available what was previously otherwise. There is the attention-grabbing kind: the tabloid story that depicts the sordid affairs of a celebrity, the press conference that blows the whistle on a powerful corporation, the tell-tale gossip of the everyday, and so on. There is also the subtler kind, often implying insights forged from hours of painstaking work that leads to a breakthrough – such as the television documentary that draws on unearthed evidence to tell the story of an ancient civilization. There is also the solidarity-promoting kind that seeks to find public recognition for previously personalized troubles and identities. Through such efforts, the promise is that the closed off, unrecognized, unintelligible and unacknowledged become manifest. In being previously closed off, unrecognized, unintelligible and unacknowledged, what is made available typically becomes imparted with much epistemic and affective significance.
Despite the familiarity of revelation-talk, this notion has been subject to limited academic theorizing to date outside of matters divine. Revelations: A Sociology of Uncovering sets out to examine both how making available is done as a practical activity as well as the implications of revealing. In other words, it is concerned with how revelations are realized and what is realized through them. Central to the argument will be treating attempts to make available as processes that can entail mix – that is, as processes that combine treating truth as publicly demonstrable but also as beyond simple verification, as alternately intelligible but also as unknowable.
Revelations is available as an Open Access publication via the Routledge website