ABSTRACT
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 telltale 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. Revelations sets out to examine both how making available is done as a practical activity as well as the implications of revealing. The Introduction provides the rationale for the book and its starting definitions, as well as a description of the Vesting, Becoming, Figuring, Splitting and Staging chapters.
