Representation

“Subvert representation.”

How is history written?

How do you represent truth?

Replicating, reproducing, representing reality?

Introduction

In Postmodernism, the boundary between fact and fiction is often blurred. Similarly to the style of narrative fiction, writing science or history is not exempt from scepticism as it is constructed by humans as well. To claim that a picture or discourse ‘represents’ something else is to claim that it depicts and tells the truth about that something which is represented. While representation always concerns truth, language can distort and misrepresent truth.

History and Progress

Postmodernists are sceptical about the idea of progress in society and culture. Histories are usually written from one perspective and thus lack coherence. In addition, the developments in technology such as photography have destroyed originality.

Representation and the Sublime

For the poststructuralist school of thought, including philosophers such as Lyotard and Derrida, representing reality is impossible. If an artist attempts to represent the unpresentable (the sublime - something that represents a force larger than the human), then they are to be considered an avant-garde artist. Grand narratives always try to deny the existence of the sublime. Great art on the other hand, according to Lyotard, makes us aware of the sublime.

“The fact that the unpresentable exists. To make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor made visible: this is what is at stake in a modern painting.”
The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard, 1979)

Deconstruction and Representation

As Western philosophy is built around a set of beliefs which are 'truthful', deconstructionists see representation as anti-foundationalist in intent. By challenging the grounds of someone's system of belief or thought, a deconstructionist would also see the impossibility of representing reality.