Dynamics of (In)Visibility: Immanent Potential of Young Feminism Across and Beneath the Square

The invisibilization of feminist activism driven by postfeminist trends and the strategic use of invisibility to build safe communities free from oppression represent two sides of the same coin. Both treat invisibility as a passively determined stage preceding visible activism. Moving beyond this understanding, the current study explores the immanent potential of invisibility within contemporary feminist activism by conceptualizing (in)visibility through Deleuze’s conceptual pair of the virtual and the actual. In Deleuze’s philosophy, the virtual is the immaterial potential that constitutes reality, whereas the actual is the materialization of virtuality into a specific form through the process of actualization. Accordingly, we conceptualize invisibility as a persistent potential that exerts power across and beneath the surface and enables visibilization of activism upon encountering a specific event. Drawing on interviews with 20 women aged 22–35 who participated in the 2024–2025 anti-martial law protests in South Korea, this study examines how the potential of invisibility is actualized as activism. We analyze three interrelated dimensions: the temporality through which women cultivated their inherent potential while being politically and socially invisibilized; the virtual spatiality that mediates invisibility and visibility, enabling the actualization of that potential; and the physical spatiality in which activism is materialized as an inclusive and distinctive protest culture. Through this approach, we seek to uncover the dynamic potential immanent in invisible forms and fundamentally rethink the relationship between invisibility and visibility in activism.