Hall Representation
Hall Representation
Hall Representation
Introduction
Stuart Hall
The chapters in this volume all deal, in different ways, with the question of
representation. This is one of the central practices which produce culture
and a key 'moment' in what has been called the 'circuit of culture' (see du
Gay, Hall et al., 1 9 9 7 ~ )But
. what does representation have to do with
'culture': what is the connection between them? To put it simply, culture is
about 'shared meanings'. Now, language is the privileged medium in which
we 'make sense' of things, in which meaning is produced and exchanged.
Meanings can only be shared through our common access to language. So
language is central to meaning and culture and has always been regarded as
the key repository of cultural values and meanings.
The circuit of
culture
But how does language construct meanings? How does it sustain the
dialogue between participants which enables them to build up a culture of
shared understandings and so interpret the world in roughly the same ways?
Language is able to do this because it operates as a representational system.
In language, we use signs and symbols - whether they are sounds, written
words, electronically produced images, musical notes, even objects -to
stand for or represent to other people our concepts, ideas and feelings.
Language is one of the 'media' through which thoughts, ideas and feelings
are represented in a culture. Representation through language is therefore
central to the processes by which meaning is produced. This is the basic,
underlying idea which underpins all six chapters in this book. Each chapter
examines 'the production and circulation of meaning through language' in
different ways, in relation to different examples, different areas of social
* A reference in bold indicates another book, or another chapter in another book, in the series.
2 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES
message', and even if the other person couldn't give a very logical account of
how slhe came to understand what I was 'saying'. Above all, cultural
meanings are not only 'in the head'. They organize and regulate social
practices, influence our conduct and consequently have real, practical 3k'
effects.
The emphasis on cultural practices is important. It is participants in a culture
who give meaning to people, objects and events. Things 'in themselves' $-
rarely if ever have any one, single, fixed and unchanging meaning. Even
something as obvious as a stone can be a stone, a boundary marker or a piece
of sculpture, depending on what it means - that is, within a certain context of
use, within what the philosophers call different 'language games' (i.e. the
language of boundaries, the language of sculpture, and so on). It is by our use
of things, and what we say, think and feel about them - how we represent
them - that we give them a meaning. In part, we give objects, people and
events meaning by the frameworks of interpretation which we bring to them.
y:.
In part, we give things meaning by how we use them, or integrate them into
our everyday practices. It is our use of a pile of bricks and mortar which
makes it a 'house'; and what we feel, think or say about it that makes a 'house'
a 'home'. In part, we give things meaning by how we represent them - the
words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them
we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and
conceptualize them, the values we place on them. Culture, we may say, is
involved in all those practices which are not simply genetically programmed
into us - like the jerk of the knee when tapped -but which carry meaning
and value for us, which need to be meaningfullyinterpreted by others, or X.
which depend on meaning for their effective operation. Culture, in this sense,
permeates all of society. It is what distinguishes the 'human' element in social \.
life from what is simply biologically driven. Its study underlines the crucial
role of the symbolic domain at the very heart of social life.
Where is meaning produced? Our 'circuit of culture' suggests that, in fact,
meanings are produced at several different sites and circulated through
several different processes or practices [the cultural circuit). Meaning is what A
gives us a sense of our own identity, of who we are and with whom we
'belong' - so it is tied up with questions of how culture is used to mark out
and maintain identity within and difference between groups (which is the A-
authors in this volume. Elsewhere in this series (in Mackay, ed., 1997, for
example) alternative approaches are explored, which adopt a more 'creative',
expressive or performative approach to meaning, questioning, for example,
whether it makes sense to think of music as 'working like a language'.
However, by and large, with some variations, the chapters in this book adopt
a broadly 'constructionist' approach to representation and meaning.
In Chapter 1 on 'The work of representation', Stuart Hall fills out in greater
depth the theoretical argument about meaning, language and representation
briefly summarized here. What do we mean by saying that 'meaning is
produced through language'? Using a range of examples - which it is
important to work through for yourself - the chapter takes us through the
argument of exactly what this entails. Do things - objects, people, events in
the world - carry their own, one, true meaning, fixed like number plates on
their backs, which it is the task of language to reflect accurately? Or are
meanings constantly shifting as we move fiom one culture to another, one
language to another, one historical context, one community, group or sub-
culture, to another? Is it through our systems of representation, rather than 'in
the world', that meaning is fixed? It is clear that representation is neither as
simple nor transparent a practice as it first appears and that, in order to
unpack the idea, we need to do some work on a range of examples, and bring
to bear certain concepts and theories, in order to explore and clarify its
complexities.
The question - 'Does visual language reflect a truth about the world which is
already there or does it produce meanings about the world through
representing it?' - forms the basis of Chapter 2 , 'Representing the social:
France and Frenchness in post-war humanist photography' by Peter
Hamilton. Hamilton examines the work of a group of documentary
photographers in France in the fifteen years following World War 11, all of
whom, he argues, adopted the representational approach, subject-matter,
values and aesthetic forms of a particular practice - what he calls the
'humanist paradigm' - in French photography. This distinctive body of work
produced a very specific image and definition of 'what it meant to be French'
in this period, and thus helped to give a particular meaning to the idea of
belonging to French culture and to 'Frenchness' as a national identity. What,
then, is the status, the 'truth-claims', which these documentary photographic
images are making? What are they 'documenting'? Are they to be judged by
the authenticity of their representation or by the depth and subtlety of the
feelings which the photographers put into their images? Do they reflect 'the
truth' about French society at that time - or was there more than one kind of
truth, more than one kind of 'Frenchness', depending on how it was
represented? How did the image of France which emerges fiom this work
relate to the rapid social changes sweeping through France in that period and
to our (very different?) image of 'Frenchness' today?
Chapter 3, 'The poetics and the politics of exhibiting other cultures' by
Henrietta Lidchi, takes up some of the same questions about representation,
but in relation to a different subject-matter and a different set of signifying
practices. Whereas Chapter 2 deals with the practice of photography - the
production of meaning through images - Chapter 3 deals with exhibition -
the production of meaning through the display of objects and artefacts from
'other cultures' within the context of the modern museum. Here, the
elements exhibited are often 'things' rather than 'words or images' and the
signifying practice involved is that of arrangement and display within a
physical space, rather than layout on the page of an illustrated magazine or
journal. Nevertheless, as this chapter argues, exhibition too is a 'system' or
'practice of representation' - and therefore works 'like a language'. Every
choice - to show this rather than that, to show this in relation to that, to say
this about that - is a choice about how to represent 'other cultures'; and each
choice has consequences both for what meanings are produced and for how
meaning is produced. Henrietta Lidchi shows how those meanings are
inevitably implicated in relations of power - especially between those who
are doing the exhibiting and those who are being exhibited.
The introduction of questions of power into the argument about
representation is one of the ways in which the book consistently seeks to
probe, expand and complexify our understanding of the process of
representation. In Chapter 4, 'The spectacle of the "Other"', Stuart Hall takes
up this theme of 'representing difference' from Chapter 3, but now in the
context of more contemporary popular cultural forms (news photos,
advertising, film and popular illustration). It looks at how 'racial', ethnic and
sexual difference has been 'represented' in a range of visual examples across
a number of historical archives. Central questions about how 'difference' is
represented as 'Other', and the essentializing of 'difference' through
stereotyping are addressed. However, as the argument develops, the chapter
takes up the wider question of how signifying practices actually structure the
way we 'look' -how different modes of 'looking' are being inscribed by these
representational practices; and how violence, fantasy and 'desire' also play
into representational practices, making them much more complex and their
meanings more ambivalent. The chapter ends by considering some counter-
strategies in the 'politics of representation' - the way meaning can be
struggled over, and whether a particular regime of representation can be
challenged, contested and transformed.
The question of how the spectator or the consumer is drawn into and
implicated by certain practices of representation returns in Sean Nixon's
Chapter 5, 'Exhibiting masculinity', on the construction of new gendered
identities in contemporary advertising, magazines and consumer industries
addressed especially to men. Nixon asks whether representational practices
in the media in recent years, have been constructing new 'masculine
identities'. Are the different languages of consumer culture, retailing and
display developing new 'subject-positions', with which young men are
increasingly invited to identify? And, if so, what do these images tell us
about how the meanings of masculinity are shifting in late-modern visual
culture? 'Masculinity', Nixon argues, far from being fixed and given
biologically, accretes a variety of different meanings - different ways of 'being'
INTRODUCTION 9
only work if they are to some degree shared, at least to the extent that they
make effective 'translation' between 'speakers' possible. We should perhaps
learn to think of meaning less in terms of 'accuracy' and 'truth' and more in
terms of effective exchange - a process of translation, which facilitates
cultural communication while always recognizing the persistence of
difference and power between different 'speakers' within the same
cultural circuit.
References
DU GAY,P. (ed.) (1997)Production of Culture/Cultures of Production, London,
SageIThe Open University (Book 4 in this series).
DU GAY, P., HALL, S., JANES,L., MACKAY, H. and NEGUS, K. (1997)Doing Cultural
Studies: the story of the Sony Walkman, London, Sageflhe Open University
(Book 1in this series).
HALL, S. (ed.) (1977) Representation: cultural representations and signifying
practices, London, SageIThe Open University (Book 2 in this series).
MACKAY,H . (ed.) (1997) Consumption and Everyday Life, London, SageIThe
Open University (Book 5 in this series).
THOMPSON, K.(ed.) (1997)Media and Cultural Regulation, London, SageIThe
Open University (Book 6 in this series).
WOODWARD, K. (ed.) (1997) Identity and Difference, London, SageIThe Open
University (Book 3 in this series).
THE WORK OF
REPRESENTATION
Stuart Hall
Contents
j REPRESENTATION, MEANING A N D LANGUAGE
I.I Making meaning, representing things
1.2 Language and representation
1.3 Sharing the codes
1.4 Theories of representation
1.5 The language of traffic lights
1.6 Summary
2 SAUSSURE'S LEGACY
2.1 The social part of language
2.2 Critique of Saussure's model
2.3 Summary
This is how you give meaning to things through language. This is how you
'make sense of' the world of people, objects and events, and how you are able
to express a complex thought about those things to other people, or
X
FIGURE 1.1
William Holman
Hunt, Our English
Coasts (Ytrayed
Sheep'), 1852.
FIGURE 1.2
Q: When is a sheep not a sheep?
A: When it's a work of art.
(Damien Hirst, Away from the Flock, 1994).
CHAPTER I THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 21
They bear no obvious relationship at all to the things to which they refer. The
letters T,R,E,E, do not look anything like trees in Nature, nor does the word
'tree' in English sound like 'real' trees (if indeed they make any sound at all!).
The relationship in these systems of representation between the sign, the
concept and the object to which they might be used to refer is entirely
arbitrary. By 'arbitrary' we mean that in principle any collection of letters or
any sound in any order would do the trick equally well. Trees would not
mind if we used the word SEERT - 'trees' written backwards - to represent
the concept of them. This is clear from the fact that, in French, quite different
letters and a quite different sound is used to refer to what, to all appearances,
is the same thing - a 'real' tree - and, as far as we can tell, to the same concept
- a large plant that grows in nature. The French and English seem to be using
the same concept. But the concept which in English is represented by the
word, TREE, is represented in French by the word, ARBRE.
$& about Greenland in his novel, Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow (1994,
&* pp. 5-6), graphically describes 'frazzil ice' which is 'kneaded together into
*<
%,g: a soapy mash called porridge ice, which gradually forms free-floating
i$jP plates, pancake ice, which one, cold, noonday hour, on a Sunday, freezes
into a single solid sheet'. Such distinctions are too fine and elaborate
$2even for the English who are always talking about the weather! The
$9, question, however, is - do the Inuit actually experience snow differently
,- born the English? Their language system suggests they conceptualize the
*
weather differently. But how far is our experience actually bounded by
our linguistic and conceptual universe?
One implication of this argument about cultural codes is that, if meaning is the
result, not of something fixed out there, in nature, but of our social, cultural
and linguistic conventions, then meaning can never be finally fixed. We can
all 'agree' to allow words to carry somewhat different meanings - as we have
for example, with the word 'gay', or the use, by young people, of the word
'wicked!' as a term of approval. Of course, there must be some fixing of
meaning in language, or we would never be able to understand one another.
We can't get up one morning and suddenly decide to represent the concept of
a 'tree' with the letters or the word VYXZ, and expect people to follow what
we are saying. On the other hand, there is no absolute or final fixing of
meaning. Social and linguistic conventions do change over time. In the
language of modern managerialism, what we used to call 'students', 'clients',
'patients' and 'passengers' have all become 'customers'. Linguistic codes vary
significantly between one language and another. Many cultures do not have
words for concepts which are normal and widely acceptable to us. Words
constantly go out of common usage, and new phrases are coined: think, for
example, of the use of 'down-sizing' to represent the process of firms laying
people off work. Even when the actual words remain stable, their
connotations shift or they acquire a different nuance. The problem is
especially acute in translation. For example, does the difference in English
between know and understand correspond exactly to and capture exactly the
same conceptual distinction as the French make between savoir and
connaitre? Perhaps; but can we be sure?
The main point is that meaning does not inhere in things, in the world. It is
constructed, produced. It is the result of a signifying practice - a practice that
produces meaning, that makes things mean.
true meaning as it already exists in the world. As the poet Gertrude Stein once
said, 'A rose is a rose is a rose'. In the fourth century BC, the Greeks used the
notion of mimesis to explain how language, even drawing and painting,
mirrored or imitated Nature; they thought of Homer's great poem, The Iliad, as
'imitatingta heroic series of events. So the theory which says that language
works by simply reflecting or imitating the truth that is already there and fixed
in the world. is sometimes called 'mimetic'.
Of course there is a certain obvious truth to mimetic theories of representation
and language. As we've pointed out, visual signs do bear some relationship to
the shape and texture of the objects which they represent. But, as was also
pointed out earlier, a two-dimensional visual image of a rose is a sign - it
should not be confused with the real plant with thorns and blooms growing in
the garden. Remember also that there are many words, sounds and images
which we fully well understand but which are entirely fictional or fantasy and
refer to worlds which are wholly imaginary - including, many people now
CHAPTER I THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 25
think, most of The Iliad! Of course, I can use the word 'rose' to refer to real,
actual plants growing in a garden, as we have said before. But this is because I
know the code which links the concept with a particular word or image. I
cannot think or speak or draw with an actual rose. And if someone says to me
that there is no such word as 'rose' for a plant in her culture, the actual plant
in the garden cannot resolve the failure of communication between us. Within
the conventions of the different language codes we are using, we are both right
-and for us to understand each other, one of us must learn the code linking
the flower with the word for it in the other's culture.
The second approach to meaning in representation argues the opposite case.
It holds that itis the speaker, the author, who imposes his or her unique
meaning on the world through language. Words mean what the author
la1 intends they should mean. This is the intentional approach. Again, there is
I
some point to this argument since we all, as individuals, do use language to
convey or communicate things which are special or unique to us, to our way
of seeing the world. However, as a general theory of representation through
language, the intentional approach is also flawed. We cannot be the sole or
unique source of meanings in language, since that would mean that we could
express ourselves in entirely private languages. But the essence of language is
communication and that, in turn, depends on shared linguistic conventions
and shared codes. Language can never be wholly a private game. Our private
intended meanings, however personal to us, have to enter into the rules, codes
and conventions of language to be shared and understood. Language is a
social system through and through. This means that our private thoughts have
to negotiate with all the other meanings for words or images which have been
stored in language which our use of the language system will inevitably trigger
into action.
The third approach recognizes this public, social character of language. It
acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of
language can fix meaning in language. Things don't mean: we construct
meaning, using representational systems - concepts and signs. Hence it is
tionist called the constructivist or constructionist approach to meaning in language.
1
According to this approach, we must not confuse the material world, where
things and people exist, and the symbolic practices and processes through
which representation, meaning and language operate. Constructivists do not
deny the existence of the material world. However, it is not the material
world which conveys meaning: it is the language system or whatever system
we are using to represent our concepts. It is social actors who use the
conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other
representational systems to construct meaning, to make the world
meaningful and to communicate about that world meaningfully to others.
Of course, signs may also have a material dimension. Representational
systems consist of the actual sounds we make with our vocal chords, the
images we make on light-sensitive paper with cameras, the marks we make
with paint on canvas, the digital impulses we transmit electronically.
Representation is a practice, a kind of 'work', which uses material objects and
26 REPRESENTATION: CULTUFHL REPRESENTATIONSAND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES
effects. But the meaning depends, not on the material quality of the sign, but
on its symbolicfunction. It is because a particular sound or word stands for,
symbolizes or represents a concept that it can function, in language, as a sign
and convey meaning - or, as the constructionists say, signify (sign-i-fy).
from one another, classified and arranged in our mental universe. Secondly,
there are the ways words or images are correlated with colours in our
language - our linguistic colour-codes. Actually, of course, a language of
colours consists of more than just the individual words for different points on
the colour spectrum. It also depends on how they function in relation to one
another - the sorts of things which are governed by grammar and syntax in
written or spoken languages, which allow us to express rather complex ideas.
In the language of traffic lights, it is the sequence and position of the colours,
as well as the colours themselves, which enable them to carry meaning and
thus function as signs.
Does it matter which colours we use? No, the constructionists argue. This is
because what signifies is not the colours themselves but (a) the fact that they
are different and can be distinguished from one another; and (b) the fact that
they are organized into a particular sequence - Red followed by Green, with
sometimes a warning Amber in between which says, in effect, 'Get ready!
Lights about to change.' Constructionists put this point in the following way.
What signifies, what carries meaning - they argue - is not each colour in
itself nor even the concept or word for it. It is the difference between Red and
Green which signifies. This is a very important principle, in general, about
representation and meaning, and we shall return to it on more than one
occasion in the chapters which follow. Think about it in these terms. If you
couldn't differentiate between Red and Green, you couldn't use one to mean
'Stop' and the other to mean 'Go'. In the same way, it is only the difference
between the letters P and T which enable the word SHEEP to be linked, in the
English language code, to the concept of 'the animal with four legs and a
woolly coat', and the word SHEET to 'the material we use to cover ourselves
in bed at night'.
In principle, any combination of colours - like any collection of letters in
written language or of sounds in spoken language - would do, provided they
are sufficiently different not to be confused. Constructionists express this
idea by saying that all signs are 'arbitrary'. 'Arbitrary' means that there is no
natural relationship between the sign and its meaning or concept. Since Red
only means 'Stop' because that is how the code works, in principle any
colour would do, including Green. It is the code that fixes the meaning, not
the colour itself. This also has wider implications for the theory of
representation and meaning in language. It means that signs themselves
cannot fix meaning. Instead, meaning depends on the relation between a sign
and a concept which is fixed by a code. Meaning, the constructionists would
say, is 'relational'.
ACTIVITY 3
Why not test this point about the arbitrary nature of the sign and the
importance of the code for yourself? Construct a code to govern the
movement of traffic using two different colours - Yellow and Blue - as in
the following:
When the yellow light is showing, ...
Now add an instruction allowing pedestrians and cyclists only to cross,
using Pink.
Provided the code tells us clearly how to read or interpret each colour, and
everyone agrees to interpret them in this way, any colour will do. These are
just colours, just as the word SHEEP is just a jumble of letters. In French the
same animal is referred to using the very different linguistic sign MOUTON.
Signs are arbitrary.Their meanings are fixed by codes.
As we said earlier, traffic lights are machines, and colours are the material
effect of light-waves on the retina of the eye. But objects - things - can also
function as signs, provided they have been assigned a concept and meaning
within our cultural and linguistic codes. As signs, they work symbolically -
they represent concepts, and signify. Their effects, however, are felt in the
material and social world. Red and Green function in the language of traffic
lights as signs, but they have real material and social effects. They regulate
the social behaviour of drivers and, without them, there would be many more
traffic accidents at road intersections.
1.6 Summary
We have come a long way in exploring the nature of representation. It is time
to summarize what we have learned about the constructionist approach to
representation through language.
Representation is the production of meaning through language. In
representation, constructionists argue, we use signs, organized into languages
of different kinds, to communicate meaningfully with others. Languages can
use signs to symbolize, stand for or reference objects, people arid events in
the so-called 'real' world. But they can also reference imaginary things and
fantasy worlds or abstract ideas which are not in any obvious sense part of
our material world. There is no simple relationship of reflection, imitation or
one-to-one correspondence between language and the real world. The world
is not accurately or otherwise reflected in the mirror of language. Language
does not work like a mirror. Meaning is produced within language, in and
through various representational systems which, for convenience, we call
'languages'. Meaning is produced by the practice, the 'work', of
representation. It is constructed through signifying - i.e. meaning-producing
- practices.
How does this take place? In fact, it depends on two different but related
systems of representation. First, the concepts which are formed in the mind
function as a system of mental representation which classifies and organizes
the world into meaningful categories. If we have a concept for something, we
can say we know its 'meaning'. But we cannot communicate this meaning
without a second system of representation, a language. Language consists of
signs organized into various relationships. But signs can only convey meaning
CHAPTER 1 THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 29
ACTIVITY 4
All this may seem rather abstract. But we can quickly demonstrate its
relevance by an example from painting.
Look at the painting of a still life by the Spanish painter, Juan Sanchez
FIGURE 1.3 Cotan (1521-1627), entitled Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber
Juan Cotin, (Figure 1.3). It seems as if the painter has made every effort to use the
Quince, Cabbage, 'language of painting' accurately to reflect these four objects, to capture or
Melon and 'imitate nature'. Is this, then, an example of a reflective or mimetic form of
Cucumber, representation - a painting reflecting the 'true meaning' of what already
c. 1602. exists in Cotfin's kitclien? Or can we find the operation of certain codes,
the language of painting used to produce a certain meaning? Start with
the question, what does the painting mean to you? What is it 'saying'?
Then go on to ask, how is it saying it - how does representation work in
this painting?
Write down any thoughts at all that come to you on looking at the
painting. What do these objects say to you? What meanings do they
trigger off?
READING A
Now read the edited extract from an analysis of the still life by the art
critic and theorist, Norman Bryson, included as Reading A at the end of
this chapter. Don't be concerned, at this stage, if the language seems a
little difficult and you don't understand all the terms. Pick out the main
points about the way representation works in the painting, according to
Bryson.
Bryson is by no means the only critic of Coth's painting, and certainly
doesn't provide the only 'correct' reading of it. That's not the point. The
point of the example is that he helps us to see how, even in a still life,
the 'language of painting' does not function simply to reflect or imitate a
meaning which is already there in nature, but to produce meanings.
The act of painting is a signifyingpractice. Take note, in particular, of
what Bryson says about the following points:
1 the way the painting invites you, the viewer, to look- what he calls
its 'mode of seeing'; in part, the function of the language is to position
you, the viewer, in a certain relation to meaning.
2 the relationship to food which is posed by the painting.
3 how, according to Bryson, 'mathematical form' is used by C o t h to
distort the painting so as to bring out a particular meaning. Can a
distorted meaning in painting be 'true'?
4 the meaning of the difference between 'creatural' and 'geometric'
space: the language of painting creates its own kind of space.
If necessary, work through the extract again, picking up these specific
points.
2 Saussure's legacy
The social constructionist view of language and representation which we have
been discussing owes a great deal to the work and influence of the Swiss
linguist, Saussure, who was born in Geneva in 1857, did much of his work in
Paris, and died in 1913. He is known as the 'father of modern linguistics'.
For our purposes, his importance lies, not in his detailed work in linguistics,
but in his general view of representation and the way his model of language
CHAPTER I THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 31
2.3 Summary
How far, then, have we come in our discussion of theories of representation?
We began by contrasting three different approaches. The reflective or
mimetic approach proposed a direct and transparent relationship of imitation
or reflection between words (signs) and things. The intentional theory
reduced representation to the intentions of its author or subject. The
constructionist theory proposed a complex and mediated relationship
between things in the world, our concepts in thought and language. We have
focused at greatest length on this approach. The correlations between these
levels - the material, the conceptual and the signifying - are governed by our
cultural and linguistic codes and it is this set of interconnections which
produces meaning. We then showed how much this general model of how
systems of representation work in the production of meaning owed to the
work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Here, the key point was the link provided by
the codes between the forms of expression used by language (whether speech,
writing, drawing, or other types of representation) - which Saussure called the
signifiers - and the mental concepts associated with them - the signifieds.
The connection between these two systems of representation produced signs;
and signs, organized into languages, produced meanings, and could be used to
reference objects, people and events in the 'real' world.
The underlying argument behind the semiotic approach is that, since all
cultural objects convey meaning, and all cultural practices depend on
meaning, they must make use of signs; and in so far as they do, they must work
like language works, and be amenable to an analysis which basically makes
use of Saussure's linguistic concepts (e.g. the signifierlsignified and langue1
parole distinctions, his idea of underlying codes and structures, and the
arbitrary nature of the sign). Thus, when in his collection of essays, FIGURE 1.4
Mythologies (1972), the French critic, Roland Bathes, studied 'The world of Wrestling as a
wrestling', 'Soap powders and detergents', 'The face of Greta Garbo' or 'The language of
Blue Guides to Europe', he brought a semiotic approach to bear on 'reading' 'excess'.
popular culture, treating these
activities and objects as signs, as a
language through which meaning is
'
communicated. For example, most of
us would think of a wrestling match as
a competitive game or sport designed
for one wrestler to gain victory over an
opponent. Barthes, however, asks, not
'Who won?' but 'What is the meaning of
this event?' He treats it as a text to be
read. He 'reads' the exaggerated
gestures of wrestlers as a grandiloquent
language of what he calls the pure
spectacle of excess.
CHAPTER I THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 37
READING B
You should now read the brief extract from Bathes's 'reading' of 'The
world of wrestling', provided as Reading B at the end of this chapter.
ACTIVITY 5
Look at the example of clothes in a magazine fashion spread (Figure 1.5).
Apply Saussure's model to analyse what the clothes are 'saying'? How
would you decode their message? In particular, which elements are
operating as signifiers and what concepts - signifieds - are you applying
to them? Don't just get an overall impression - work it out in detail. How
is the 'language of fashion' working in this example?
The clothes themselves are the signifiers. The fashion code in western
consumer cultures like ours correlates particular kinds or combinations of
clothing with certain concepts ('elegance', 'formality', 'casual-ness',
'romance'). These are the signifieds. This coding converts the clothes into
signs, which can then be read as a language. In the language of fashion, the
signifiers are arranged in a certain sequence, in certain relations to one
another. Relations may be of similarity - certain items 'go together'
(e.g. casual shoes with jeans). Differences
are also marked - no leather belts with
evening wear. Some signs actually create
meaning by exploiting 'difference': e.g.
Doc Marten boots with flowing long skirt.
These bits of clothing 'say something' -
they convey meaning. Of course, not
everybody reads fashion in the same way.
There are differences of gender, age, class,
'race'. But all those who share the same
fashion code will interpret the signs in
roughly the same ways. 'Oh, jeans don't
look right for that event. It's a formal
occasion -it demands something more
elegant. '
You may have noticed that, in this
example, we have moved from the very
narrow linguistic level from which we
drew examples in the first section, to a
wider, cultural level. Note, also, that two
linked operations are required to complete
the representation process by which
meaning is produced. First, we need a
basic code which links a particular piece of
material which is cut and sewn in a
particular way (signifier) to our mental concept of it (signified) - say a FIGURE 1.5
particular cut of material to our concept of 'a dress' or 'jeans'. (Remember that Advertisement for
only some cultures would 'read' the signifier in this way, or indeed possess Gucci,in Vogue,
the concept of (i.e. have classified clothes into) 'a dress', as different from September 1995.
'jeans'.) The combination of signifier and signified is what Saussure called a
sign. Then, having recognized the material as a dress, or as jeans, and
produced a sign, we can progress to a second, wider level, which links these
signs to broader, cultural themes, concepts or meanings -for example, an
evening dress to 'formality' or 'elegance', jeans to 'casualness'. Barthes called
the first, descriptive level, the level of denotation: the second level, that of denotation
connotation. Both, of course, require the use of codes. connotation
ACTIVITY 6 ?+\k.:?>x,
)ok care at the
sement 'anzani
products (Figure 1.6) and, with
Barthes's analysis in mind, do
the following exercise:
iat sign. can you
!ntify in ad?
2 What do they mean? What
are their signifieds?
3 Now, look at the ad as a
whole, at the level of 'myth'.
What is its wider, cultural
message or theme? Can you
construct one?
READING D
Now read the second extract
from Barthes, in which he offers
an interpretation of the Panzani
ad for spaghetti and vegetables
ina s ,ing bag IS a 'myth' about
It:ilia nation: cul.ture. The
extract from 'Rhetoric of the
image ', in Image-Music-Text
(19771,is included as Reading D
I
I
at the end of this chapter.
FIGURE 1.6
'Italian-ness' and the Ponzoni ad.
CHAPTER 1 THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 41
FIGURE 1.7 Barthes suggests that we can read the Panzani ad as a 'myth' by linking its
An image of completed message (this is a picture of some packets of pasta, a tin, a sachet,
'Englishness' some tomatoes, onions, peppers, a mushroom, all emerging from a half-open
- advertisement string bag) with the cultural theme or concept of 'Italianicity' (or as we would
for Jaguar. say, 'Italian-ness']. Then, at the level of the myth or meta-language, the
Panzani ad becomes a message about the essential meaning of Italian-ness as
a national culture. Can commodities really become the signifiers for myths
of nationality? Can you think of ads, in magazines or television, which work
in the same way, drawing on the myth of 'Englishness'? Or 'Frenchness'? Or
'American-ness'? Or 'Indian-ness'? Try to apply the idea of 'Englishness' to
the ad reproduced as Figure 1.7.
through what he called discourse (rather than just language). His project, he
said, was to analyse 'how human beings understand themselves in our
culture' and how our knowledge about 'the social, the embodied individual
and shared meanings' comes to be produced in different periods. With its
emphasis on cultural understanding and shared meanings, you can see that
Foucault's project was still to some degree indebted to Saussure and Barthes
(see Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982, p. 17) while in other ways departing
radically from them. Foucault's work was much more historically grounded,
more attentive to historical specificities, than the semiotic approach. As he
said, 'relations of power, not relations of meaning' were his main concern.
The particular objects of Foucault's attention were the various disciplines of
knowledge in the human and social sciences - what he called 'the
subjectifying social sciences'. These had acquired an increasingly prominent
and influential role in modern culture and were, in many instances,
considered to be the discourses which, like religion in earlier times, could
give us the 'truth' about knowledge.
We will return to Foucault's work in some of the subsequent chapters in this
book (for example, Chapter 5). Here, we want to introduce Foucault and the
discursive approach to representation by outlining three of his major ideas:
his concept of discourse; the issue of power and knowledge; and the question
of the subject. It might be useful, however, to start by giving you a general
flavour, in Foucault's graphic (and somewhat over-stated) terms, of how he
saw his project differing from that of the semiotic approach to representation.
He moved away from an approach like that.of Saussure and Barthes, based on
'the domain of signifying structure', towards one based on analysing what he
called 'relations of force, strategic developments and tactics':
Here I believe one's point of reference should not be to the great model of
language (langue) and signs, but to that of war and battle. The history
which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a
language: relations of power not relations of meaning ...
(Foucault, 1980, pp. 114-5)
Rejecting both Hegelian Marxism (what he calls 'the dialectic') and semiotics,
Foucault argued that:
real, material existence in the world. What he does argue is that 'nothing has
any meaning outside of discourse' [Foucault, 1972). As Laclau and Mouffe
put it, 'we use [the term discourse] to emphasize the fact that every social
configuration is meaningful' (1990, p. 100). The concept of discourse is not
about whether things exist but about where meaning comes from.
READING E
Turn now to Reading E, by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, a short
extract from NewReflections on the Revolution of our Eme (1990),from
which we have just quoted, and read it carefully. What they argue is that
physical objects do exist, but they have no fixed meaning; they only take
on meaning and become objects of knowledge within discourse. Make
sure you follow their argument before reading further.
1 In terms of the discourse about 'building a wall', the distinction
between the linguistic part (asking for a brick) and the physical act
[putting the brick in place) does not matter. The first is linguistic, the
second is physical. But both are 'discursive' - meaningful within
discourse.
2 The round leather object which you kick is a physical object - a ball.
But it only becomes 'a football' within the context of the rules of the
game, which are socially constructed.
3 It is impossible to determine the meaning of an object outside of its
context of use. A stone thrown in a fight is a different thing ('a projectile')
f?om a stone displayed in a museum ['a piece of sculpture').
This idea that physical things and actions exist, but they only take on
meaning and become objects of knowledge within discourse, is at the heart of
the constructionist theory of meaning and representation. Foucault argues
that since we can only have a knowledge of things if they have a meaning, it
is discourse - not the things-in-themselves - which produces knowledge.
Subjects like 'madness', 'punishment' and 'sexuality' only exist meaningfully
within the discourses about them. Thus, the study of the discourses of
madness, punishment or sexuality would have to include the following
elements:
1 statements about 'madness', 'punishment' or 'sexuality' which give us a
certain kind of knowledge about these things;
2 the rules which prescribe certain ways of talking about these topics and
exclude other ways - which govern what is 'sayable' or 'thinkable' about
insanity, punishment or sexuality, at a particular historical moment;
3 'subjects' who in some ways personify the discourse - the madman, the
hysterical woman, the criminal, the deviant, the sexually perverse
person; with the attributes we would expect these subjects to have, given
the way knowledge about the topic was constructed at that time;
4 how this knowledge about the topic acquires authority, a sense of
embodying the 'truth' about it; constituting the 'truth of the matter', at a
historical moment;
46 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONSAND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES
5 the practices within institutions for dealing with the subjects - medical
treatment for the insane, punishment regimes for the guilty, moral
discipline for the sexually deviant - whose conduct is being regulated
and organized according to those ideas;
6 acknowledgement that a different discourse or episteme will arise at a
later historical moment, supplanting the existing one, opening up a new
discursive formation, and producing, in its turn, new conceptions of
'madness' or 'punishment' or 'sexuality', new discourses with the power
and authority, the 'truth', to regulate social practices in new ways.
disease existed separate from the body, to the modern idea that disease arose
within and could be mapped directly by its course through the human body
(McNay, 1994). This discursive shift changed medical practice. It gave
greater importance to the doctor's 'gaze' which could now 'read' the course of
disease simply by a powerful look at what Foucault called 'the visible body'
of the patient - following the 'routes ... laid down in accordance with a now
familiar geometry ... the anatomical atlas' (Foucault, 1973, pp. 3 4 ) . This
greater knowledge increased the doctor's power of surveillance vis-a-vis the
patient.
Knowledge about and practices around all these subjects, Foucault argued,
were historically and culturally specific. They did not and could not
meaningfully exist outside specific discourses, i.e. outside the ways they
were represented in discourse, produced in knowledge and regulated by the
discursive practices and disciplinary techniques of a particular society and
time. Far from accepting the trans-historical continuities of which historians
are so fond, Foucault believed that more significant were the radical breaks,
ruptures and discontinuities between one period and another, between one
discursive formation and another.
The first concerns the way Foucault conceived the linkage between
knowledge and power. Hitherto, we have tended to think that power
operates in a direct and brutally repressive fashion, dispensing with polite
things like culture and knowledge, though Gramsci certainly broke with that
model of power. Foucault argued that not only is knowledge always a form of
power, but power is implicated in the questions of whether and in what
circumstances knowledge is to be applied or not. This question of the
CHAPTER I THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 49
Truth isn't outside power. ... Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced
only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular
effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics'
of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes
function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to
distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is
sanctioned ... the status of those who are charged with saying what
counts as true.
(Foucault, 1980, p. 131)
FIGURE 1.8 Andre Brouillet, A clinical lesson at La SolpArikre (given by Charcot), 1887.
CHAPTER I THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 53
composition'. Indeed, Freud noted, 'he never appeared greater to his listeners
than after he had made the effort, by giving the most detailed account of his
train of thought, by the greatest frankness about his doubts and hesitations, to
reduce the gulf between teacher and pupil' (Gay, 1988, p. 49).
ACTIVITY 8
Now look carefully at the picture again and, bearing in mind what we have
said about Foucault's method of and approach to representation, answer
the following questions:
1 Who commands the centre of the picture?
2 Who or what is its 'subject? Are (1)and (2) the same?
3 Can you tell that knowledge is being produced here? How?
4 What do you notice about relations of power in the picture? How are
they represented? How does the form and spatial relationships of the
picture represent this?
5 Describe the 'gaze' of the people in the image: who is looking at
whom? What does that tell us?
6 What do the age and gender of the participants tell us?
7 What message does the patient's body convey?
8 Is there a sexual meaning in the image? If so, what?
9 What is the relationship of you, the viewer, to the image?
10 Do you notice anything else about the image which we have missed?
READING F
Now read the account of Charcot and La SalpetriBre offered by Elaine
Showalter in 'The performance of hysteria' hom The Female Malady,
reproduced as Reading F at the end of this chapter. Look carefully at the
two photographs of Charcot's hysterical women patients. What do you
make of their captions?
On the other hand, Foucault did include the subject in his theorizing, though
he did not restore the subject to its position as the centre and author of
representation. Indeed, as his work developed, he became more and more
concerned with questions about 'the subject', and in his very late and
unfinished work, hi even went so far as to give the subject a certain reflexive
awareness of his or her own conduct, though this still stopped short of
restoring the subject to histher full sovereignty.
Foucault was certainly deeply critical of what we might call the traditional
conception of the subject. The conventional notion thinks of 'the subject' as
an individual who is fully endowed with consciousness; an autonomous and
stable entity, the 'core' of the self, and the independent, authentic source of
action and meaning. According to this conception, when we hear ourselves
speak, we feel we are identical with what has been said. And this identity of
the subject with what is said gives himiher a privileged position in relation to
meaning. It suggests that, although other people may misunderstand us, we
always understand ourselves because we were the source of meaning in the
first place.
However, as we have seen, the shift towards a constructionist conception of
language and representation did a great deal to displace the subject from a
privileged position in relation to knowledge and meaning. The same is true
of Foucault's discursive approach. It is discourse, not the subjects who speak
it, which produces knowledge. Subjects may produce particular texts, but
they are operating within the limits of the episteme, the discursive formation,
the regime of truth, of a particular period and culture. Indeed, this is one of
Foucault's most radical propositions: the 'subject' is produced within
discourse. This subject of discourse cannot be outside discourse, because it
must be subjected to discourse. It must submit to its rules and conventions,
to its dispositions of powerlknowledge. The subject can become the bearer of
the kind of knowledge which discourse produces. It can become the object
through which power is relayed. But it cannot stand outside power/
knowledge as its source and author. In 'The subject and power' (19821,
Foucault writes that 'My objective ... has been to create a history of the
different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects ...
It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects. There are two
meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else's control and
dependence, and tied to his (sic)own identity by a conscience and self-
knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and
makes subject to' (Foucault, 1982, pp. 208,2121. Making discourse and
representation more historical has therefore been matched, in Foucault, by an
equally radical historicization of the subject. 'One has to dispense with the
constituent subject, to get rid of the subject itself, that's to say, to arrive at an
analysis which can account for the constitution of the subject within a
historical framework' (Foucault, 1980, p. 115).
Where, then, is 'the subject' in this more discursive approach to meaning,
representation and power?
Foucault's 'subject' seems to be produced through discourse in two different
senses or places. First, the discourse itself produces 'subjects' - figures who
personify the particular forms of knowledge which the discourse produces.
These subjects have the attributes we would expect as these are defined by
the discourse: the madman, the hysterical woman, the homosexual, the
individualized criminal, and so on. These figures are specific to specific
discursive regimes and historical periods. But the discourse also produces a
place for the subject [i.e. the reader or viewer, who is also 'subjected to'
discourse) from which its particular knowledge and meaning most makes
sense. It is not inevitable that all individuals in a particular period will
become the subjects of a particular discourse in this sense, and thus the
bearers of its powerlknowledge. But for them - us - to do so, they - we -
must locate themselves/ourselves in the position from which the discourse
makes most sense, and thus become its 'subjects' by 'subjecting' ourselves to
its meanings, power and regulation. All discourses, then, construct subject- subject-po~
positions, from which alone they make sense.
This approach has radical implications for a theory of representation. For it
suggests that discourses themselves construct the subject-positions from
which they become meaningful and have effects. Individuals may differ as to
their social class, gendered, 'racial' and ethnic characteristics (among other
factors), but they will not be able to take meaning until they have identified
with those positions which the discourse constructs, subjected themselves to
its rules, and hence become the subjects of its powerlknowledge. For
example, pornography produced for men will only 'work' for women,
according to this theory, if in some sense women put themselves in the
position of the 'desiring male voyeur' - which is the ideal subject-position
which the discourse of male pornography constructs - and look at the models
from this 'masculine' discursive position. This may seem, and is, a highly
contestable proposition. But let us consider an example which illustrates the
argument.
painter. It was originally called 'The Empress with her Ladies and a Dwarf';
but by the inventory of 1666, it had acquired the title of 'A Portrait of the
Infanta of Spain with her Ladies In Waiting and Servants, by the Court
Painter and Palace Chamberlain Diego Velasquez'. It was subsequently called
Las Meninas - 'The Maids of Honour'. Some argue that the painting shows
Velasquez working on Las Meninas itself and was painted with the aid of a
mirror - but this now seems unlikely. The most widely held and convincing
explanation is that Velasquez was working on a full-length portrait of the
King and Queen, and that it is the royal couple who are reflected in the
mirror on the back wall. It is at the couple that the princess and her
attendants are looking and on them that the artist's gaze appears to rest as he
steps back from his canvas. The reflection artfully includes the royal couple
in the picture. This is essentially the account which Foucault accepts.
ACTIVITY 9
Look at the picture carefully, while we summarize Foucault's argument.
FlGURE 1.9
Diego Velasquez,
Los Mttninas,
1656.
Las Meninas shows the interior of a room - perhaps the painter's studio or
some other room in the Spanish Royal Palace, the Escorial. The scene,
though in its deeper recesses rather dark, is bathed in light from a window on
the right. 'We are looking at a picture in which the painter is in turn looking
out at us,' says Foucault (1970, p. 4). To the left, looking forwards, is the
painter himself, Velasquez. He is in the act of painting and his brush is
raised, 'perhaps ... considering whether to add some finishing touch to the
canvas' (p. 3). He is looking at his model, who is sitting in the place from
which we are looking, but we cannot see who the model is because the
canvas on which Velasquez is painting has its back to us, its face resolutely
turned away from our gaze. In the centre of the painting stands what
tradition recognizes as the little princess, the Infanta Maragarita, who has
come to watch the proceedings. She is the centre of the picture we are
looking at, but she is not the 'subject' of Velasquez' canvas. The Infanta has
with her an 'entourage of duennas, maids of honour, courtiers and dwarfs'
and her dog (p. 9). The courtiers stand behind, towards the back on the right.
Her maids of honour stand on either side of her, framing her. To the right at
the front are two dwarfs, one a famous court jester. The eyes of many of these
figures, like that of the painter himself, are looking out towards the front of
the picture at the sitters.
Who are they - the figures at whom everyone is looking but whom we cannot
look at and whose portraits on the canvas we are forbidden to see? In fact,
though at first we think we cannot see them, the picture tells us who they are
because, behind the Infanta's head and a little to the left of the centre of the
picture, surrounded by a heavy wooden frame, is a mirror; and in the mirror -
at last - are reflected the sitters, who are in fact seated in the position from
which we are looking: 'a reflection that shows us quite simply what is lacking
in everyone's gaze' (p. 15). The figures reflected in the mirror are, in fact, the
King, Philip IV, and his wife, Mariana. Beside the mirror, to the right of it, in
the back wall, is another 'frame', but this is not a mirror reflecting forwards; it
is a doorway leading backwards out of the room. On the stair, his feet placed
on different steps, 'a man stands out in full-length silhouette'. He has just
entered or is just leaving the scene and is looking at it from behind, observing
what is going on in it but 'content to surprise those within without being seen
himself' (p. 10).
Representation and the subject are the painting's underlying message - what it
is about, its sub-text.
2 Clearly, representation here is not about a 'true' reflection or imitation of
reality. Of course, the people in the painting may 'look like' the actual people
in the Spanish court. But the discourse of painting in the picture is doing a
great deal more than simply trying to mirror accurately what exists.
3 Everything in a sense is visible in the painting. And yet, what it is 'about'
-its meaning - depends on how we 'read' it. It is as much constructed
around what you can't see as what you can. You can't see what is being
painted on the canvas, though this seems to be the point of the whole
exercise. You can't see what everyone is looking at, which is the sitters,
unless we assume it is a reflection of them in the mirror. They are both in
and not in the picture. Or rather, they are present through a kind of
substitution. We cannot see them because they are not directly represented:
but their 'absence' is represented - mirrored through their reflection in the
mirror at the back. The meaning of the picture is produced, Foucault argues,
through this complex inter-play between presence (what you see, the visible)
and absence (what you can't see, what has displaced it within the frame).
Representation works as much through what is not shown, as through
what is.
4 In fact, a number of substitutions or displacements seem to be going on
here. For example, the 'subject' and centre of the painting we are looking at
seems to be the Infanta. But the 'subject' or centre is also, of course, the
sitters - the King and Queen -whom we can't see but whom the others are
looking at. You can tell this from the fact that the mirror on the wall in which
the King and Queen are reflected is also almost exactly at the centre of the
field of vision of the picture. So the Infanta and the Royal Couple, in a sense,
share the place of the centre as the principal 'subjects' of the painting. It all
depends on where you are looking from - in towards the scene from where
you, the spectator, is sitting or outwards from the scene, from the position of
the people in the picture. If you accept Foucault's argument, then there are
two subjects to the painting and two centres. And the composition of the
picture - its discourse - forces us to oscillate between these two 'subjects'
without ever finally deciding which one to identify with. Representation in
the painting seems firm and clear - everything in place. But our vision, the
way we look at the picture, oscillates between two centres, two subjects, two
positions of looking, two meanings. Far from being finally resolved into
some absolute truth which is the meaning of the picture, the discourse of the
painting quite deliberately keeps us in this state of suspended attention, in
this oscillating process of looking. Its meaning is always in the process of
emerging, yet any final meaning is constantly deferred.
5 You can tell a great deal about how the picture works as a discourse, and
what it means, by following the orchestration of looking- who is looking at
what or whom. Our look - the eyes of the person looking at the picture, the
spectator - follows the relationships of looking as represented in the picture.
60 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS A N D SIGNIFYING PRACTICES
We know the figure of the Infanta is important because her attendants are
looking at her. But we know that someone even more important is sitting in
front of the scene whom we can't see, because many figures -the Infanta, the
jester, the painter himself - are looking at them! So the spectator (who is also
'subjected' to the discourse of the painting] is doing two kinds of looking.
Looking at the scene from the position outside, in front of, the picture. And at
the same time, looking out of the scene, by identifying with the looking being
done by the figures in the painting. Projecting ourselves into the subjects of the
painting help us as spectators to see, to 'make sense' of it. We take up the
positions indicated by the discourse, identify with them, subject ourselves to
its meanings, and become its 'subjects'.
6 It is critical for Foucault's argument that the painting does not have a
completed meaning. It only means something in relation to the spectator who
is looking at it. The spectator completes the meaning of the picture. Meaning is
therefore constructed in the dialogue between the painting and the spectator.
Velasquez, of course, could not know who would subsequently occupy the
position of the spectator. Nevertheless, the whole 'scene' of the painting had to
be laid out in relation to that ideal point in front of the painting from which any
spectator must look if the painting is to make sense. The spectator, we might
say, is painted into position in front of the picture. In this sense, the discourse
produces a subject-position for the spectator-subject. For the painting to work,
the spectator, whoever he or she may be, must first 'subject' himselflherself to
the painting's discourse and, in this way, become the painting's ideal viewer,
the producer of its meanings - its 'subject'. This is what is meant by saying that
the discourse constructs the spectator as a subject -by which we mean that it
constructs a place for the subject-spectator who is looking at and making sense
of it.
7 Representation therefore occurs from at least three positions in the painting.
First of all there is us, the spectator, whose 'look' puts together and unifies the
different elements and relationships in the picture into an overall meaning.
This subject must be there for the painting to make sense, but helshe is not
represented in the painting.
Then there is the painter who painted the scene. He is 'present' in two places at
once, since he must at one time have been standing where we are now sitting,
in order to paint the scene, but he has then put himself into (represented
himself in) the picture, looking back towards that point of view where we, the
spectator, have taken his place. We may also say that the scene makes sense
and is pulled together in relation to the court figure standing on the stair at the
back, since he too surveys it all but - like us and like the painter - from
somewhat outside it.
8 Finally, consider the mirror on the back wall. If it were a 'real' mirror, it
should now be representing or reflecting us, since we are standing in that
position in front of the scene to which everyone is looking and from which
everything makes sense. But it does not mirror us, it shows in our place the
King and Queen of Spain. Somehow the discourse of the painting positions us
CHAPTER I THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION 61
. in the place of the Sovereign! You can imagine what fun Foucault had with
this substitution.
Foucault argues that it is clear from the way the discourse of representation
works in the painting that it must be looked at and made sense of from that
one subject-position in front of it from which we, the spectators, are looking.
This is also the point-of-view from which a camera would have to be
positioned in order to film the scene. And, lo and behold, the person whom
Velasquez chooses to 'represent' sitting in this position is The Sovereign -
t
'master of all he surveys' -who is both the 'subject of' the painting (what it is
about) and the 'subject in' the painting - the one whom the discourse sets in
place, but who, simultaneously, makes sense of it and understands it all by a
look of supreme mastery.
construction, which is at the heart of culture, to its full depths. What we have
offered here is, we hope, a relatively clear account of a set of complex, and as
yet tentative, ideas in an unfinished project.
References
BARTHES, R. (1967) The Elements of Semiology, London, Cape.
BARTHES, R. (1972) Mythologies, London, Cape.
R. (1972a) 'The world of wrestling' in Mythologies, London, Cape.
BARTHES,
BARTHES, R. (1972b) 'Myth today' in Mythologies, London, Cape.
R. (1975) The Pleasure of the Text, New York, Hall and Wang.
BARTHES,
BARTHES, R. (1977) Image-Music-Text, Glasgow, Fontana.
BRYSON,N. (1990) Looking at the Overlooked:four essays on still life painting,
London, Reaktion Books.
M. and HUSSAIN, A. (1984) Michel Foucault, Basingstoke, Macmillan.
COUSINS,
CULLER, J. (1976) Saussure, London, Fontana.
J. (1981) Positions, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.
DERRIDA,
DREYFUS,
H. and RABINOW, P. (eds) (1982) Beyond Stucturalism and
Hermeneutics, Brighton, Harvester.
DU GAY,
P. (ed.) (1997) Production of Culture/Cultures of Production, London,
SageIThe Open University (Book 4 in this series).
DU GAY, P.,HALL, S., JANES, L., MACKAY, H. and NEGUS, K. (1997) Doing Cultural
Studies: the story of the Sony Walkman, London, SageIThe Open University
(Book 1in this series).
M. (1970) The Order of Things, London, Tavistock.
FOUCAULT,
M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, London, Tavistock.
FOUCAULT,
FOUCAULT, M. (1973) The Birth of the Clinic, London, Tavistock.
FOUCAULT, M.(1978) The History of Sexuality, Harmondsworth, Allen Lane/
Penguin Books.
FOUCAULT,M. (1977a) Discipline and Punish, London, Tavistock.
FOUCAULT,M. (1977b) 'Nietzsche, genealogy, history', in Language, Counter-
Memory, Practice, Oxford, Blackwell.
M. (1980) Power/Knowledge, Brighton, Harvester.
FOUCAULT,
FOUCAULT,
M. (1982) 'The subject and power' in Dreyfus and Rabinow (eds).
FREUD, S. and BREUER, J. (1974) Studies on Hysteria, Harmondsworth, Pelican.
First published 1895.
GAY, P. (1988) Freud: a life for our time, London, Macmillan.
HALL,S. (1980) 'Encoding and decoding' in Hall, S. et al. (eds) Culture, Media,
Language, London, Hutchinson.
HALL,s.(1992) 'The West and the Rest', in Hall, S. and Gieben, B. (eds)
Formations of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press/The Open University.
HOEG, P. (1994) Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow, London, Flamingo.
LACLAU, E. and MOUFFE, C. (1990) 'Post-Marxism without apologies' in
Laclau, E., New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, London, Verso.
MCNAY, L. (1994)Foucault: a critical introduction, Cambridge, Polity Press.
MACKAY, H.(ed.) (1997) Consumption and Everyday Life, London, SageIThe
Open University (Book 5 in this series).
SAUSSURE, F. DE (1960) Course i n General Linguistics, London, Peter Owen.
E. (19871 The Female Malady, London, Virago.
SHOWALTER,
J. (1981) Sex, Politics and Society, London, Longman.
WEEKS,
WEEKS,J. (1985) Sexuality and its Discontents, London, Routledge.
READING A: or in contact with a surface, they would decay more
quickly). Placed in a kitchen, next to plates and
Norman Bryson, 'Language, reflection knives, bowls and pitchers, the objects would
and still life' inevitably point towards their consumption at
table, but the cantarero maintains the idea of the
With Cotan, too, the images have as their objects as separable from, dissociated from, their
immediate function the separation of the viewer function as food. In Quince, Cabbage, Melon and
from the previous mode of seeing [...I: they Cucumber [Figure 1.31 no-one can touch the
decondition the habitual and abolish the endless suspended quince or cabbage without disturbing
eclipsing and fatigue of worldly vision, replacing them and setting them rocking in space: their
these with brilliance. The enemy is a mode of motionlessness is the mark of human absence,
seeing which thinks it knows in advance what is distance from the hand that reaches to eat; and it
worth looking at and what is not: against that, the renders them immaculate. Hanging on strings, the
image presents the constant surprise of things seen quince and the cabbage lack the weight known to
for the first time. Sight is taken back to a [primal] the hand. Their weightlessness disowns such
stage before it learned how to scotomise [break up/ intimate knowledge. Having none of the familiarity
divide] the visual field, how to screen out the that comes from touch, and divorced from the idea
unimportant and not see, but scan. In place of the of consumption, the objects take on a value that is
abbreviated forms for which the world scans, Cotfin nothing to do with their role as nourishment.
supplies forms that are articulated at immense
What replaces their interest as sustenance is their
length, forms so copious or prolix that one cannot
interest as mathematical form. Like many painters
see where or how to begin to simplify them. They
of his period in Spain, Cotfin has a highly
offer no inroads for reduction because they omit
developed sense of geometrical order; but whereas
nothing. Just at the point where the eye thinks it
knows the form and can afford to skip, the image
the ideas of suhere., elliuse and cone are used for
L
dead flesh (the public calls Thauvin la barbaque, Sometimes the wrestler triumphs with a repulsive
'stinking meat'), so that the passionate sneer while kneeling on the good sportsman;
condemnation of the crowd no longer stems from sometimes he gives the crowd a conceited smile
its judgement, but instead from the very depth of its which forebodes an early revenge; sometimes,
humours. It will thereafter let itself be frenetically pinned to the ground, he hits the floor
embroiled in an idea of Thauvin which will ostentatiously to make evident to all the intolerable
conform entirely with this physical origin: his nature of his situation; and sometimes he erects a
actions will perfectly correspond to the essential complicated set of signs meant to make the public
viscosity of his personage. understand that he legitimately personifies the
ever-entertaining image of the grumbler, endlessly
It is therefore in the body of the wrestler that we
confabulating about his displeasure.
find the first key to the contest. I know from the
start that all of Thauvin's actions, his treacheries, We are therefore dealing with a real Human
cruelties and acts of cowardice, will not fail to Comedy, where the most socially-inspired nuances
measure up to the first image of ignobility he gave of passion (conceit, rightfulness, refined cruelty, a
me; I can trust him to carry out intelligently and to sense of 'paying one's debts') always felicitously
the last detail all the gestures of a kind of find the clearest sign which can receive them,
amorphous baseness, and thus fill to the brim the express them and triumphantly carry them to the
image of the most repugnant bastard there is: the confines of the hall. It is obvious that at such a
bastard-octopus. Wrestlers therefore have a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is
physique as peremptory as those of the characters genuine or not. What the public wants is the image
of the Commedia dell'Arte, who display in of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a
advance, in their costumes and attitudes, the future problem of truth in wrestling than in the theatre. In
contents of their parts: just as Pantaloon can never both, what is expected is the intelligible
be anything but a ridiculous cuckold, Harlequin an representation of moral situations which are
astute servant and the Doctor a stupid pedant, in usually private. This emptying out of interiority to
the same way Thauvin will never be anything but the benefit of its exterior signs, this exhaustion of
an ignoble traitor, Reinihres (a tall blond fellow the content by the form, is the very principle of
with a limp body and unkempt hair) the moving triumphant classical art. [...I
image of passivity, Mazaud (short and arrogant like
Source: Barthes, 1972a, pp. 16-18.
a cock) that of grotesque conceit, and Orsano (an
effeminate teddy-boy first seen in a blue-and-pink
dressing-gown) that, doubly humorous, of a
vindictive salope, or bitch (for I do not think that
the public of the Elysee-Montmartre, like Littre,
believes the word salope to be a masculine).
The physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes
a basic sign, which like a seed contains the whole
fight. But this seed proliferates, for it is at every
turn during the fight, in each new situation, that
the body of the wrestler casts to the public the
magical entertainment of a temperament which
finds its natural expression in a gesture. The
different strata of meaning throw light on each
other, and form the most intelligible of spectacles.
Wrestling is like a diacritic writing: above the
fundamental meaning of his body, the wrestler
arranges comments which are episodic but always
opportune, and constantly help the reading of the
fight by means of gestures, attitudes and mimicry
which make the intention utterly obvious.
68 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES
I SlGNlFlER II SIGNIFIED
popular public lectures. Axel Munthe, a doctor Albert Londe, had been brought in to take charge of
practicing in Paris, wrote a vivid description of a full-fledged photographic service. Its methods
Charcot's Tuesday lectures at the Salp8triBre: 'The included not only the most advanced technology
huge amphitheatre was filled to the last place with and apparatus, such as laboratories, a studio with
a multicoloured audience drawn from tout Paris, platforms, a bed, screens, black, dark-gray, and
authors, journalists, leading actors and actresses, light-gray background curtains, headrests, and an
fashionable demimondaines.' The hypnotized iron support for feeble patients, but also elaborate
women patients put on a spectacular show before adminstrative techniques of observation, selection
this crowd of curiosity seekers. of models, and record-keeping. The photographs of
women were published in three volumes called
Some of them smelt with delight a bottle of Iconographic photographique de la SalpetriBre.
ammonia when told it was rose water, others Thus Charcot's hospital became an environment in
would eat a piece of charcoal when presented to which female hysteria was perpetually presented,
them as chocolate. Another would crawl on all represented, and reproduced.
fours on the floor, barking furiously when told
Such techniques appealed to Charcot because his
she was a dog, flap her arms as if trying to fly
approach to psychiatric analysis was strongly
when turned into a pigeon, lift her skirts with a
visual and imagistic. As Freud has explained,
shriek of terror when a glove was thrown at her
Charcot 'had an artistically gifted temperament - as
feet with a suggestion of being a snake. Another
he said himself, he was a 'visuel', a seer. ... He was
would walk with a top hat in her arms rocking it
to and fro and kissing it tenderly when she was accustomed to look again and again at things that
were incomprehensible to him, to deepen his
told it was her baby.
impression of them day by day until suddenly
(Munthe, 1930, pp. 296, 302-3)
understanding of them dawned upon him' (Freud,
1948, pp. 10-13.). Charcot's public lectures were
The grand finale would be the performance of a full
hysterical seizure. among the first to use visual aids - pictures, graphs,
statues, models, and illustrations that he drew on
Furthermore, the representation of female hysteria the blackboard in colored chalk - as well as the
was a central aspect of Charcot's work. His presence of the patients as models.
hysterical women patients were surrounded by
The specialty of the house at the Salp8triBre was
images of female hysteria. In the lecture hall, as
grande hyst&ie, or 'hystero-epilepsy,' a prolonged
Freud noted, was Robert-Fleury's painting of Pine1
and elaborate convulsive seizure that occurred in
freeing the madwomen. On the opposite wall was a
famous lithograph of Charcot, holding and women. A complete seizure involved three phases:
lecturing about a swooning and half-undressed the epileptoid phase, in which the woman lost
consciousness and foamed at the mouth; the phase
young woman before a room of sober and attentive
men, yet another representation that seemed to be of clownism, involving eccentric physical
instructing the hysterical woman in her act contortions; and the phase of attitudes
passionnelles, a miming of incidents and emotions
[Figure 1.81.
from the patient's life. In the iconographies,
Finally, Charcot's use of photography was the most photographs of this last phase were given subtitles
extensive in nineteenth-century psychiatric that suggested Charcot's interpretation of hysterical
practice. As one of his admirers remarked, 'The gestures as linked to female sexuality, despite his
camera was as crucial to the study of hysteria as the' disclaimers: 'amorous supplication', 'ecstasy',
microscope was to histology' (quoted in Goldstein, eroticism' [Figure 1.101. This interpretation of
1982, p. 215). In 1875 one of his assistants, Paul hysterical gestures as sexual was reinforced by
RBgnard, had assembled an album of photographs Charcot's efforts to pinpoint areas of the body that
of female nervous patients. The pictures of women might induce convulsions when pressed. The
exhibiting various phases of hysterical attacks were ovarian region, he concluded, was a particularly
deemed so interesting that a photographic sensitive hysterogenic zone.
workshop or atelier was installed within the
Because the behavior of Charcot's hysterical stars
hospital. By the 1880s a professional photographer,
was so theatrical, and because it was rarely
I
%
.%
READINGS FOR CHAPTER ONE 73