Understanding Representation: Meaning, Language, and Culture by Stuart Hall, Exercises of Painting

Download Understanding Representation: Meaning, Language, and Culture by Stuart Hall and more Exercises Painting in PDF only on Docsity! THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION Stuart Hall 1 REPRESENTATION, MEANING AND LANGUAGE In this chapter we will be concentrating on one of the key processes in the ‘cultural circuit’ (see Du Gay et al., 1997, and the Introduction to this volume) – the practices of representation. The aim of this chapter is to introduce you to this topic, and to explain what it is about and why we give it such importance in cultural studies. The concept of representation has come to occupy a new and important place in the study of culture. Representation connects meaning and language to culture. But what exactly do people mean by it? What does representation have to do with culture and meaning? One common-sense usage of the term is as follows: ‘Representation means using language to say something meaning- ful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.’ You may well ask, ‘Is that all?’ Well, yes and no. Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs and images which stand for or represent things. But this is a far from simple or straightforward process, as you will soon discover. How does the concept of representation connect meaning and language to culture? In order to explore this connection further, we will look at a number of different theories about how language is used to represent the world. Here we will be drawing a distinction between three different accounts or theories: the reflective, the intentional and the constructionist approaches to representation. Does language simply reflect a meaning which already exists out there in the world of objects, people and events (reflective)? Does language express only what the speaker or writer or painter wants to say, his or her personally intended meaning (intentional)? Or is meaning constructed in and through language (constructionist)? You will learn more in a moment about these three approaches. Most of the chapter will be spent exploring the constructionist approach, because it is this perspective which has had the most significant impact on cultural studies in recent years. This CHAPTER ONE 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 1 18/04/2013 12:23:49 PM 2 Representation chapter chooses to examine two major variants or models of the constructionist approach – the semi- otic approach, greatly influenced by the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the discursive approach, associated with the French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault. Later chapters in this book will take up these two theories again, among others, so you will have an opportunity to consolidate your understanding of them, and to apply them to different areas of analysis. Other chapters will introduce theoretical paradigms which apply constructionist approaches in different ways to that of semiotics and Foucault. All, however, put in question the very nature of representation. We turn to this question first. 1.1 Making meaning, representing things What does the word representation really mean, in this context? What does the process of repre- sentation involve? How does representation work? To put it briefly, representation is the production of meaning through language. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary suggests two relevant meanings for the word: 1 To represent something is to describe or depict it, to call it up in the mind by description or por- trayal or imagination; to place a likeness of it before us in our mind or in the senses; as, for exam- ple, in the sentence, ‘This picture represents the murder of Abel by Cain.’ 2 To represent also means to symbolize, stand for, to be a specimen of, or to substitute for; as in the sentence, ‘In Christianity, the cross represents the suffering and crucifixion of Christ.’ The figures in the painting stand in the place of, and at the same time, stand for the story of Cain and Abel. Likewise, the cross simply consists of two wooden planks nailed together; but in the context of Christian belief and teaching, it takes on, symbolizes or comes to stand for a wider set of meanings about the crucifixion of the Son of God, and this is a concept we can put into words and pictures. ACTIVITY 1 Here is a simple exercise about representation. Look at any familiar object in the room. You will immediately recognize what it is. But how do you know what the object is? What does ‘recognize’ mean? Now try to make yourself conscious of what you are doing – observe what is going on as you do it. You recognize what it is because your thought processes decode your visual perception of the object in terms of a concept of it which you have in your head. This must be so because, if you look away from the object, you can still think about it by conjuring it up, as we say, ‘in your mind’s eye’. Go on – try to follow the process as it happens: there is the object ... and there is the concept in your head which tells you what it is, what your visual image of it means. Now, tell me what it is. Say it aloud: ‘It’s a lamp’ – or a table or a book or the phone or whatever. The concept of the object has passed through your mental representation of it to me via the word for it which 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 2 18/04/2013 12:23:49 PM 5 The Work of Representation to reference actual things or objects in the world (a point further elaborated in Du Gay, ed., 1997, and Mackay, ed., 1997). Any sound, word, image or object which functions as a sign, and is organized with other signs into a system which is capable of carrying and expressing meaning is, from this point of view, ‘a language’. It is in this sense that the model of meaning which I have been analysing here is often described as a ‘linguistic’ one; and that all the theories of meaning which follow this basic model are described as belonging to ‘the linguistic turn’ in the social sciences and cultural studies. At the heart of the meaning process in culture, then, are two related ‘systems of representa- tion’. The first enables us to give meaning to the world by constructing a set of correspondences or a chain of equivalences between things – people, objects, events, abstract ideas, etc. – and our system of concepts, our conceptual maps. The second depends on constructing a set of correspond- ences between our conceptual map and a set of signs, arranged or organized into various languages which stand for or represent those concepts. The relation between ‘things’, concepts and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call ‘representation’. 1.2 Language and representation Just as people who belong to the same culture must share a broadly similar conceptual map, so they must also share the same way of interpreting the signs of a language, for only in this way can meanings be effectively exchanged between people. But how do we know which concept stands for which thing? Or which word effectively represents which concept? How do I know which sounds or images will carry, through language, the meaning of my concepts and what I want to say with them to you? This may seem relatively simple in the case of visual signs, because the drawing, painting, camera or TV image of a sheep bears a resemblance to the animal with a woolly coat grazing in a field to which I want to refer. Even so, we need to remind ourselves that a drawn or painted or digital version of a sheep is not exactly like a ‘real’ sheep. For one thing, most images are in two dimensions whereas the ‘real’ sheep exists in three dimensions. Visual signs and images, even when they bear a close resemblance to the things to which they refer, are still signs: they carry meaning and thus have to be interpreted. In order to interpret them, we must have access to the two systems of representation discussed earlier: to a conceptual map which correlates the sheep in the field with the concept of a ‘sheep’; and a language system which in visual language, bears some resemblance to the real thing or ‘looks like it’ in some way. This argu- ment is clearest if we think of a cartoon drawing or an abstract painting of a ‘sheep’, where we need a very sophisticated conceptual and shared linguistic system to be certain that we are all ‘reading’ the sign in the same way. Even then we may find ourselves wondering whether it really is a picture of a sheep at all. As the relationship between the sign and its referent becomes less clear-cut, the meaning begins to slip and slide away from us into uncertainty. Meaning is no longer transparently passing from one person to another ... 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 5 18/04/2013 12:23:49 PM 6 Representation So, even in the case of visual language, where the relationship between the concept and the sign seems fairly straightforward, the matter is far from simple. It is even more difficult with written or spoken language, where words don’t look or sound anything like the things to which they refer. In FIGURE 1.1 William Holman Hunt, Our English Coasts (‘Strayed 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) 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 6 18/04/2013 12:23:50 PM 7 The Work of Representation part, this is because there are different kinds of signs. Visual signs are what are called iconic signs. That is, they bear, in their form, a certain resemblance to the object, person or event to which they refer. A photograph of a tree reproduces some of the actual conditions of our visual perception in the visual sign. Written or spoken signs, on the other hand, are what is called indexical. 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 back- wards – 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. 1.3 Sharing the codes The question, then, is: how do people who belong to the same culture, who share the same conceptual map and who speak or write the same language (English) know that the arbitrary combination of letters and sounds that makes up the word TREE will stand for or represent the concept ‘a large plant that grows in nature’? One possibility would be that the objects in the world themselves embody and fix in some way their ‘true’ meaning. But it is not at all clear that real trees know that they are trees, and even less clear that they know that the word in English which represents the concept of themselves is written TREE whereas in French it is written ARBRE! As far as they are concerned, it could just as well be written COW or VACHE or indeed XYZ. The meaning is not in the object or person or thing, nor is it in the word. It is we who fix the meaning so firmly that, after a while, it comes to seem natural and inevitable. The meaning is constructed by the system of representation. It is constructed and fixed by the code, which sets up the cor- relation between our conceptual system and our language system in such a way that, every time we think of a tree, the code tells us to use the English word TREE, or the French word ARBRE. The code tells us that, in our culture – that is, in our conceptual and language codes – the concept ‘tree’ is represented by the letters T, R, E, E, arranged in a certain sequence, just as in Morse code, the sign for V (which in the Second World War Churchill made ‘stand for’ or represent ‘Victory’) is Dot, Dot, Dot, Dash, and in the ‘language of traffic lights’, Green = Go! and Red = Stop! One way of thinking about ‘culture’, then, is in terms of these shared conceptual maps, shared lan- guage systems and the codes which govern the relationships of translation between them. Codes fix the relationships between concepts and signs. They stabilize meaning within different languages and cultures. They tell us which language to use to convey which idea. The reverse is also true. Codes tell us which concepts are being referred to when we hear or read which signs. By arbitrarily fixing the 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 7 18/04/2013 12:23:50 PM 10 Representation difference in English between know and understand correspond exactly to and capture exactly the same conceptual distinction as the French make between savoir and connaître? 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. 1.4 Theories of representation There are, broadly speaking, three approaches to explaining how representation of meaning through language works. We may call these the reflective, the intentional and the constructionist or con- structivist approaches. You might think of each as an attempt to answer the questions, ‘Where do meanings come from?’ and ‘How can we tell the “true” meaning of a word or image?’ In the reflective approach, meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea or event in the real world, and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the 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 draw- ing and painting, mirrored or imitated nature; they thought of Homer’s great poem, The Iliad, as ‘imitating’ a 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 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 it is the speaker, the author, who imposes his or her unique meaning on the world through language. Words mean what the author intends they should mean. This is the intentional approach. Again, there is 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, 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 10 18/04/2013 12:23:50 PM 11 The Work of Representation 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 sys- tem 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 nei- ther 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 called the constructivist or constructionist approach to meaning in language. 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 repre- sent our concepts. It is social actors who use the conceptual systems of their culture and the linguis- tic 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 electroni- cally. Representation is a practice, a kind of ‘work’, which uses material objects and effects. But the meaning depends not on the material quality of the sign, but on its symbolic function. 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). 1.5 The language of traffic lights The simplest example of this point, which is critical for an understanding of how languages function as representational systems, is the famous traffic lights example. A traffic light is a machine which produces different coloured lights in sequence. The effect of light of different wavelengths on the eye – which is a natural and material phenomenon – produces the sensation of different colours. Now these things certainly do exist in the material world. But it is our culture which breaks the spec- trum of light into different colours, distinguishes them from one another and attaches names – Red, Green, Yellow, Blue – to them. We use a way of classifying the colour spectrum to create colours which are different from one another. We represent or symbolize the different colours and classify 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 11 18/04/2013 12:23:50 PM 12 Representation them according to different colour-concepts. This is the conceptual colour system of our culture. We say ‘our culture’ because, of course, other cultures may divide the colour spectrum differently. What’s more, they certainly use different actual words or letters to identify different colours: what we call ‘red’, the French call ‘rouge’, and so on. This is the linguistic code – the one which cor- relates certain words (signs) with certain colours (concepts), and thus enables us to communicate about colours to other people, using ‘the language of colours’. But how do we use this representational or symbolic system to regulate the traffic? Colours do not have any ‘true’ or fixed meaning in that sense. Red does not mean ‘Stop’ in nature, any more than Green means ‘Go’. In other settings, Red may stand for, symbolize or represent ‘Blood’ or ‘Danger’ or ‘Communism’; and Green may represent ‘Ireland’ or ‘The Countryside’ or ‘Environmentalism’. Even these meanings can change. In the ‘language of electric plugs’, Red used to mean ‘the connection with the positive charge’ but this was arbitrarily and without expla- nation changed to Brown! But then for many years the producers of plugs had to attach a slip of paper telling people that the code or convention had changed, otherwise how would they know? Red and Green work in the language of traffic lights because ‘Stop’ and ‘Go’ are the meanings which have been assigned to them in our culture by the code or conventions governing this lan- guage, and this code is widely known and almost universally obeyed in our culture and cultures like ours – though we can well imagine other cultures which did not possess the code, in which this language would be a complete mystery. Let us stay with the example for a moment, to explore a little further how, according to the constructionist approach to representation, colours and the ‘language of traffic lights’ work as a signifying or representational system. Recall the two representational systems we spoke of earlier. First, there is the conceptual map of colours in our culture – the way colours are distinguished 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 distin- guished 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 impor- tant principle, in general, about representation and meaning, and we shall return to it on more than one occasion in the chapters that follow. Think about it in these terms. If you couldn’t 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 12 18/04/2013 12:23:50 PM 15 The Work of Representation 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 representa- tion works in the painting, according to Bryson. Bryson is by no means the only critic of Cotán’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 signifying practice. Take note, in par- ticular, 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 Cotán 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. FIGURE 1.3 Juan Cotán, Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, c. 1602 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 15 18/04/2013 12:23:51 PM 16 Representation 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 shaped the semiotic approach to the problem of representation in a wide variety of cultural fields. You will recognize much about Saussure’s thinking from what we have already said about the constructionist approach. For Saussure, according to Jonathan Culler (1976, p. 19), the production of meaning depends on language: ‘Language is a system of signs.’ Sounds, images, written words, paintings, photographs, etc. function as signs within language ‘only when they serve to express or communicate ideas. ... [To] communicate ideas, they must be part of a system of conventions ...’ (ibid.). Material objects can function as signs and communicate meaning too, as we saw from the ‘language of traffic lights’ example. In an important move, Saussure analysed the sign into two further elements. There was, he argued, the form (the actual word, image, photo, etc.), and there was the idea or concept in your head with which the form was associated. Saussure called the first element, the signifier, and the second element – the corresponding concept it triggered off in your head – the signified. Every time you hear or read or see the signifier (e.g. the word or image of a Walkman, for example), it correlates with the signified (the concept of a portable cassette-player in your head). Both are required to pro- duce meaning but it is the relation between them, fixed by our cultural and linguistic codes, which sustains representation. Thus, ‘the sign is the union of a form which signifies (signifier) ... and an idea signified (signified). Though we may speak ... as if they are separate entities, they exist only as components of the sign ... [which is] the central fact of language’ (Culler, 1976, p. 19). Saussure also insisted on what in section 1 we called the arbitrary nature of the sign: ‘There is no natural or inevitable link between the signifier and the signified’ (ibid.). Signs do not possess a fixed or essential meaning. What signifies, according to Saussure, is not RED or the essence of ‘red-ness’, but the difference between RED and GREEN. Signs, Saussure argued, ‘are members of a system and are defined in relation to the other members of that system’. For example, it is hard to define the meaning of FATHER except in relation to, and in terms of its difference from, other kinship terms, like MOTHER, DAUGHTER, SON, and so on. This marking of difference within language is fundamental to the production of meaning, accord- ing to Saussure. Even at a simple level (to repeat an earlier example), we must be able to distin- guish, within language, between SHEEP and SHEET, before we can link one of those words to the concept of an animal that produces wool, and the other to the concept of a cloth that covers a bed. The simplest way of marking difference is, of course, by means of a binary opposition – in this example, all the letters are the same except P and T. Similarly, the meaning of a concept or word is often defined in relation to its direct opposite – as in night/day. Later critics of Saussure were to observe that binaries (e.g. black/white) are only one, rather simplistic, way of establishing differ- ence. As well as the stark difference between black and white, there are also the many other, subtler 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 16 18/04/2013 12:23:51 PM 17 The Work of Representation differences between black and dark grey, dark grey and light grey, grey and cream and off-white, off-white and brilliant white, just as there are between night, dawn, daylight, noon, dusk, and so on. However, his attention to binary oppositions brought Saussure to the revolutionary proposition that a language consists of signifiers, but in order to produce meaning, the signifiers have to be organized into ‘a system of differences’. It is the differences between signifiers which signify. Furthermore, the relation between the signifier and the signified, which is fixed by our cultural codes, is not – Saussure argued – permanently fixed. Words shift their meanings. The concepts (signifieds) to which they refer also change, historically, and every shift alters the conceptual map of the culture, leading different cultures, at different historical moments, to classify and think about the world differently. For many centuries, western societies have associated the word BLACK with everything that is dark, evil, forbidding, devilish, dangerous and sinful. And yet, think of how the perception of black people in America in the 1960s changed after the phrase ‘Black is Beautiful’ became a popular slogan – where the signifier, BLACK, was made to signify the exact opposite meaning (signified) to its previous associations. In Saussure’s terms, ‘Language sets up an arbitrary relation between signifiers of its own choosing on the one hand, and signifieds of its own choosing on the other. Not only does each language produce a different set of signifiers, articulating and dividing the continuum of sound (or writing or drawing or photography) in a distinctive way; each language produces a different set of signifieds; it has a distinctive and thus arbitrary way of organizing the world into concepts and categories’ (Culler, 1976, p. 23). The implications of this argument are very far-reaching for a theory of representation and for our understanding of culture. If the relationship between a signifier and its signified is the result of a sys- tem of social conventions specific to each society and to specific historical moments, then all mean- ings are produced within history and culture. They can never be finally fixed but are always subject to change, both from one cultural context and from one period to another. There is thus no single, unchanging, universal ‘true meaning’. ‘Because it is arbitrary, the sign is totally subject to history and the combination at the particular moment of a given signifier and signified is a contingent result of the historical process’ (Culler, 1976, p. 36). This opens up meaning and representation, in a radical way, to history and change. It is true that Saussure himself focused exclusively on the state of the language system at one moment of time rather than looking at linguistic change over time. However, for our purposes, the important point is the way this approach to language unfixes meaning, breaking any natural and inevitable tie between signifier and signified. This opens representation to the con- stant ‘play’ or slippage of meaning, to the constant production of new meanings, new interpretations. However, if meaning changes, historically, and is never finally fixed, then it follows that ‘taking the meaning’ must involve an active process of interpretation. Meaning has to be actively ‘read’ or ‘interpreted’. Consequently, there is a necessary and inevitable imprecision about language. The meaning we take, as viewers, readers or audiences, is never exactly the meaning which has been given by the speaker or writer or by other viewers. And since, in order to say something meaning- ful, we have to ‘enter language’, where all sorts of older meanings which pre-date us, are already stored from previous eras, we can never cleanse language completely, screening out all the other, hidden meanings which might modify or distort what we want to say. For example, we can’t entirely 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 17 18/04/2013 12:23:51 PM 20 Representation remains rule-governed. But it is not a ‘closed’ system which can be reduced to its formal elements. Since it is constantly changing, it is by definition open-ended. Meaning continues to be produced through language in forms which can never be predicted beforehand and its ‘sliding’, as we described it above, cannot be halted. Saussure may have been tempted to the former view because, like a good structuralist, he tended to study the state of the language system at one moment, as if it had stood still, and he could halt the flow of language-change. Nevertheless it is the case that many of those who have been most influenced by Saussure’s radical break with all reflective and intentional models of representation, have built on his work not by imitating his scientific and ‘structuralist’ approach, but by applying his model in a much looser, more open-ended – i.e. ‘post-structuralist’ – way. 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 rela- tionship 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 sys- tems 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 lan- guage (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. 3 FROM LANGUAGE TO CULTURE: LINGUISTICS TO SEMIOTICS Saussure’s main contribution was to the study of linguistics in a narrow sense. However, since his death, his theories have been widely deployed, as a foundation for a general approach to language and meaning, providing a model of representation which has been applied to a wide range of cultural objects and practices. Saussure himself foresaw this possibility in his famous lecture notes, collected posthumously by his students as the Course in General Linguistics (1960), where he looked forward to ‘A science that studies the life of signs within society ... I shall call it semiology, from the Greek semeion “signs” ’ (p. 16). This general approach to the study of signs in culture, and of culture as a sort of ‘language’, which Saussure foreshadowed, is now generally known by the term semiotics. 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 20 18/04/2013 12:23:51 PM 21 The Work of Representation 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 basi- cally makes use of Saussure’s linguistic concepts (e.g. the signifier/signified and langue/parole distinctions, his idea of underlying codes and structures, and the arbitrary nature of the sign). Thus, when in his collection of essays, Mythologies (1972), the French critic, Roland Barthes, studied ‘The world of wrestling’, ‘Soap powders and detergents’, ‘The face of Greta Garbo’ or The Blue Guides to Europe’, he brought a semiotic approach to bear on ‘reading’ 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. READING B You should now read the brief extract from Barthes’s ‘reading’ of ‘The world of wrestling’, provided as Reading B at the end of this chapter. FIGURE 1.4 Wrestling as a language of ‘excess’ 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 21 18/04/2013 12:23:51 PM 22 Representation In much the same way, the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, studied the customs, rituals, totemic objects, designs, myths and folk-tales of so-called ‘primitive’ peoples in Brazil, not by analysing how these things were produced and used in the context of daily life among the Amazonian peoples, but in terms of what they were trying to ‘say’, what messages about the culture they communicated. He analysed their meaning, not by interpreting their content, but by looking at the underlying rules and codes through which such objects or practices produced meaning and, in doing so, he was making a classic Saussurean or structuralist ‘move’, from the paroles of a culture to the underlying structure, its langue. To undertake this kind of work, in studying the meaning of a television programme like EastEnders, for example, we would have to treat the pictures on the screen as signifiers, and use the code of the television soap opera as a genre, to discover how each image on the screen made use of these rules to ‘say something’ (signifieds) which the viewer could ‘read’ or interpret within the formal framework of a particular kind of television narrative (see the discussion and analysis of TV soap operas in Chapter 6). In the semiotic approach, not only words and images but objects themselves can function as signi- fiers in the production of meaning. Clothes, for example, may have a simple physical function – to cover the body and protect it from the weather. But clothes also double up as signs. They construct a meaning and carry a message. An evening dress may signify ‘elegance’; a bow tie and tails, ‘formal- ity’; jeans and trainers, ‘casual dress’; a certain kind of sweater in the right setting, ‘a long, romantic, autumn walk in the wood’ (Barthes, 1967). These signs enable clothes to convey meaning and to function like a language – ‘the language of fashion’. How do they do this? 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’, ‘formal- ity’, ‘casualness’, ‘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 cer- tain 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 a 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 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 22 18/04/2013 12:23:51 PM 25 The Work of Representation READING C Turn to the short extract from ‘Myth today’ (Reading C at the end of this chapter), and read Barthes’s account of how myth functions as a system of representation. Make sure you understand what Barthes means by ‘two staggered systems’ and by the idea that myth is a ‘meta-language’ (a second-order language). For another example of this two-stage process of signification, we can turn now to another of Barthes’s famous essays. ACTIVITY 6 Now, look carefully at the advertisement for Panzani products (Figure 1.6) and, with Barthes’s analysis in mind, do the following exercise: 1 What signifiers can you identify in the 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? FIGURE 1.6 ‘Italian-ness’ and the Panzani ad 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 25 18/04/2013 12:23:52 PM 26 Representation READING D Now read the second extract from Barthes, in which he offers an interpretation of the Panzani ad for spaghetti and vegetables in a string bag as a ‘myth’ about Italian national culture. The extract from ‘Rhetoric of the image’, in Image-Music-Text (1977), is included as Reading D at the end of this chapter. Barthes suggests that we can read the Panzani ad as a ‘myth’ by linking its completed message (this is a picture of some packets of pasta, a tin, a sachet, some tomatoes, onions, peppers, a mushroom, all emerging from a half-open string bag) with the cultural theme or concept of Italianicity’ (or as we would 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 on 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. 4 DISCOURSE, POWER AND THE SUBJECT What the examples above show is that the semiotic approach provides a method for analysing how visual representations convey meaning. Already, in Roland Barthes’s work in the 1960s, as we have FIGURE 1.7 An image of ‘Englishness’ – advertisement for Jaguar 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 26 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 27 The Work of Representation seen, Saussure’s ‘linguistic’ model is developed through its application to a much wider field of signs and representations (advertising, photography, popular culture, travel, fashion, etc.). Also, there is less concern with how individual words function as signs in language, and more about the application of the language model to a much broader set of cultural practices. Saussure held out the promise that the whole domain of meaning could, at last, be systematically mapped. Barthes, too, had a ‘method’, but his semiotic approach is much more loosely and interpretively applied; and, in his later work (for example, The Pleasure of the Text, 1975), he is more concerned with the ‘play’ of meaning and desire across texts than he is with the attempt to fix meaning by a scientific analysis of language’s rules and laws. Subsequently, as we observed, the project of a ‘science of meaning’ has appeared increas- ingly untenable. Meaning and representation seem to belong irrevocably to the interpretative side of the human and cultural sciences, whose subject matter – society, culture, the human subject – is not amenable to a positivistic approach (i.e. one which seeks to discover scientific laws about society). Later developments have recognized the necessarily interpretative nature of culture and the fact that interpretations never produce a final moment of absolute truth. Instead, interpretations are always followed by other interpretations, in an endless chain. As the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, put it, writing always leads to more writing. Difference, he argued, can never be wholly captured within any binary system (Derrida, 1981). So any notion of a final meaning is always endlessly put off, deferred. Cultural studies of this interpretative kind, like other qualitative forms of sociological inquiry, are inevitably caught up in this ‘circle of meaning’. In the semiotic approach, representation was understood on the basis of the way words func- tioned as signs within language. But, for a start, in a culture, meaning often depends on larger units of analysis – narratives, statements, groups of images, whole discourses which operate across a variety of texts, areas of knowledge about a subject which have acquired widespread authority. Semiotics seemed to confine the process of representation to language, and to treat it as a closed, rather static, system. Subsequent developments became more concerned with representation as a source for the production of social knowledge – a more open system, connected in more intimate ways with social practices and questions of power. In the semiotic approach, the subject was dis- placed from the centre of language. Later theorists returned to the question of the subject, or at least to the empty space which Saussure’s theory had left; without, of course, putting him/her back in the centre, as the author or source of meaning. Even if language, in some sense, ‘spoke us’ (as Saussure tended to argue), it was also important that in certain historical moments, some people had more power to speak about some subjects than others (male doctors about mad female patients in the late nineteenth century, for example, to take one of the key examples developed in the work of Michel Foucault). Models of representation, these critics argued, ought to focus on these broader issues of knowledge and power. Foucault used the word ‘representation’ in a narrower sense than we are using it here, but he is considered to have contributed to a novel and significant general approach to the problem of 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 27 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 30 Representation 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 New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (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 its context of use. A stone thrown in a fight is a different thing (‘a projectile’) from 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 representa- tion. 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’, ‘pun- ishment’ 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; 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; 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 30 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 31 The Work of Representation 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. 4.2 Historicizing discourse: discursive practices The main point to get hold of here is the way discourse, representation, knowledge and ‘truth’ are radically historicized by Foucault, in contrast to the rather ahistorical tendency in semiotics. Things meant something and were ‘true’, he argued, only within a specific historical context. Foucault did not believe that the same phenomena would be found across different historical peri- ods. He thought that, in each period, discourse produced forms of knowledge, objects, subjects and practices of knowledge, which differed radically from period to period, with no necessary continuity between them. Thus, for Foucault, for example, mental illness was not an objective fact, which remained the same in all historical periods, and meant the same thing in all cultures. It was only within a definite discursive formation that the object, ‘madness’, could appear at all as a meaningful or intelligible construct. It was ‘constituted by all that was said, in all the statements that named it, divided it up, described it, explained it, traced its development, indicated its various correlations, judged it, and possibly gave it speech by articulating, in its name, discourses that were to be taken as its own’ (1972, p. 32). And it was only after a certain definition of ‘madness’ was put into practice, that the appropriate subject – ‘the madman’ as current medical and psychiatric knowledge defined ‘him’ – could appear. Or, take some other examples of discursive practices from his work. There have always been sexual relations. But ‘sexuality’, as a specific way of talking about, studying and regulating sexual desire, its secrets and its fantasies, Foucault argued, only appeared in western societies at a par- ticular historical moment (Foucault, 1978). There may always have been what we now call homo- sexual forms of behaviour. But ‘the homosexual’ as a specific kind of social subject, was produced, and could only make its appearance, within the moral, legal, medical and psychiatric discourses, practices and institutional apparatuses of the late nineteenth century, with their particular theories of sexual perversity (Weeks, 1981, 1985). Similarly, it makes nonsense to talk of the ‘hysterical woman’ outside the nineteenth-century view of hysteria as a very widespread female malady. In The Birth of the Clinic (1973), Foucault charted how ‘in less than half a century, the medical understand- ing of disease was transformed’ from a classical notion that 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-à-vis the patient. 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 31 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 32 Representation 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 signifi- cant were the radical breaks, ruptures and discontinuities between one period and another, between one discursive formation and another. 4.3 From discourse to power/knowledge In his later work Foucault became even more concerned with how knowledge was put to work through discursive practices in specific institutional settings to regulate the conduct of others. He focused on the relationship between knowledge and power, and how power operated within what he called an institutional apparatus and its technologies (techniques). Foucault’s conception of the apparatus of punishment, for example, included a variety of diverse elements, linguistic and non-linguistic: discourses, institutions, architectural arrangements, regulations, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophic propositions, morality, philanthropy, etc. ... The apparatus is thus always inscribed in a play of power, but it is also always linked to certain co-ordinates of knowledge. ... This is what the apparatus consists in: strategies of relations of forces supporting and supported by types of knowledge (Foucault, 1980, pp. 194, 196). This approach took as one of its key subjects of investigation the relations between knowledge, power and the body in modern society. It saw knowledge as always inextricably enmeshed in rela- tions of power because it was always being applied to the regulation of social conduct in practice (i.e. to particular ‘bodies’). This foregrounding of the relation between discourse, knowledge and power marked a significant development in the constructionist approach to representation which we have been outlining. It rescued representation from the clutches of a purely formal theory and gave it a historical, practical and ‘worldly’ context of operation. You may wonder to what extent this concern with discourse, knowledge and power brought Foucault’s interests closer to those of the classical sociological theories of ideology, especially Marxism with its concern to identify the class positions and class interests concealed within particu- lar forms of knowledge. Foucault, indeed, does come closer to addressing some of these questions about ideology than, perhaps, formal semiotics did (though Roland Barthes was also concerned with questions of ideology and myth, as we saw earlier). But Foucault had quite specific and cogent rea- sons why he rejected the classical Marxist problematic of ‘ideology’. Marx had argued that, in every epoch, ideas reflect the economic basis of society, and thus the ‘ruling ideas’ are those of the ruling class which governs a capitalist economy, and correspond to its dominant interests. Foucault’s main argument against the classical Marxist theory of ideology was that it tended to reduce all the relations 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 32 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 35 The Work of Representation power, towards the many, localized circuits, tactics, mechanisms and effects through which power circulates – what Foucault calls the ‘meticulous rituals’ or the ‘micro-physics’ of power. These power relations ‘go right down to the depth of society’ (Foucault, 1977, p. 27). They connect the way power is actually working on the ground to the great pyramids of power by what he calls a capillary movement (capillaries being the thin-walled vessels that aid the exchange of oxygen between the blood in our bodies and the surrounding tissues). Not because power at these lower levels merely reflects or ‘reproduces, at the level of individuals, bodies, gestures and behaviour, the general form of the law or government’ (Foucault, 1977, p. 27) but, on the contrary, because such an approach ‘roots [power] in forms of behaviour, bodies and local relations of power which should not at all be seen as a simple projection of the central power’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 201). To what object are the micro-physics of power primarily applied, in Foucault’s model? To the body. He places the body at the centre of the struggles between different formations of power/ knowledge. The techniques of regulation are applied to the body. Different discursive formations and apparatuses divide, classify and inscribe the body differently in their respective regimes of power and ‘truth’. In Discipline and Punish, for example, Foucault analyses the very different ways in which the body of the criminal is ‘produced’ and disciplined in different punishment regimes in France. In earlier periods, punishment was haphazard, prisons were places into which the public could wander and the ultimate punishment was inscribed violently on the body by means of instru- ments of torture and execution, etc. – a practice the essence of which is that it should be public, visible to everyone. The modern form of disciplinary regulation and power, by contrast, is private, individualized; prisoners are shut away from the public and often from one another, though continu- ally under surveillance from the authorities; and punishment is individualized. Here, the body has become the site of a new kind of disciplinary regime. Of course this ‘body’ is not simply the natural body which all human beings possess at all times. This body is produced within discourse, according to the different discursive formations – the state of knowledge about crime and the criminal, what counts as ‘true’ about how to change or deter criminal behaviour, the specific apparatus and technologies of punishment prevailing at the time. This is a radically historicized conception of the body – a sort of surface on which different regimes of power/knowledge write their meanings and effects. It thinks of the body as ‘totally imprinted by history and the processes of history’s deconstruction of the body’ (Foucault, 1977, p. 63). 4.4 Summary: Foucault and representation Foucault’s approach to representation is not easy to summarize. He is concerned with the produc- tion of knowledge and meaning through discourse. Foucault does indeed analyse particular texts and representations, as the semioticians did. But he is more inclined to analyse the whole discursive formation to which a text or a practice belongs. His concern is with knowledge provided by the human and social sciences, which organizes conduct, understanding, practice and belief, the regu- lation of bodies as well as whole populations. Although his work is clearly done in the wake of, and is profoundly influenced by, the ‘turn to language’ which marked the constructionist approach 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 35 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 36 Representation to representation, his definition of discourse is much broader than language, and includes many other elements of practice and institutional regulation which Saussure’s approach, with its linguis- tic focus, excluded. Foucault is always much more historically specific, seeing forms of power/ knowledge as always rooted in particular contexts and histories. Above all, for Foucault, the pro- duction of knowledge is always crossed with questions of power and the body; and this greatly expands the scope of what is involved in representation. The major critique levelled against his work is that he tends to absorb too much into ‘discourse’, and this has the effect of encouraging his followers to neglect the influence of the material, economic and structural factors in the operation of power/knowledge. Some critics also find his rejection of any criterion of ‘truth’ in the human sciences in favour of the idea of a ‘regime of truth’ and the will-to-power (the will to make things ‘true’) vulnerable to the charge of relativism. Nevertheless, there is little doubt about the major impact which his work has had on contemporary theories of representation and meaning. 4.5 Charcot and the performance of hysteria In the following example, we will try to apply Foucault’s method to a particular example. Figure 1.8 shows a painting by André Brouillet of the famous French psychiatrist and neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), lecturing on the subject of female hysteria to students in the lecture theatre of his famous Paris clinic at La Salpêtriére. ACTIVITY 7 Look at Brouillet’s painting (Figure 1.8). What does it reveal as a representation of the study of hysteria? Brouillet shows a hysterical patient being supported by an assistant and attended by two women. For many years, hysteria had been traditionally identified as a female malady and although Charcot demonstrated conclusively that many hysterical symptoms were to be found in men, and a signifi- cant proportion of his patients were diagnosed male hysterics, Elaine Showalter observes that ‘for Charcot, too, hysteria remains symbolically, if not medically, a female malady’ (1987, p. 148). Charcot was a very humane man who took his patients’ suffering seriously and treated them with dignity. He diagnosed hysteria as a genuine ailment rather than a malingerer’s excuse (much as has happened, in our time, after many struggles, with other illnesses, like anorexia and ME). This paint- ing represents a regular feature of Charcot’s treatment regime, where hysterical female patients displayed before an audience of medical staff and students the symptoms of their malady, ending often with a full hysterical seizure. The painting could be said to capture and represent, visually, a discursive ‘event’ – the emer- gence of a new regime of knowledge. Charcot’s great distinction, which drew students from far and wide to study with him (including, in 1885, the young Sigmund Freud from Vienna), was his demonstration ‘that hysterical symptoms such as paralysis could be produced and relieved 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 36 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 37 The Work of Representation by hypnotic suggestion’ (Showalter, 1987, p. 148). Here we see the practice of hypnosis being applied in practice. Indeed, the image seems to capture two such moments of knowledge production. Charcot did not pay much attention to what the patients said (though he observed their actions and gestures meticu- lously). But Freud and his friend Breuer did. At first, in their work when they returned home, they used Charcot’s hypnosis method, which had attracted such wide attention as a novel approach to treat- ment of hysteria at La Salpêtriére. But some years later they treated a young woman called Bertha Pappenheim for hysteria, and she, under the pseudonym ‘Anna O’, became the first case study written up in Freud and Breuer’s path-breaking Studies in Hysteria (1974/1895). It was the ‘loss of words’, her failing grasp of the syntax of her own language (German), the silences and meaningless babble of this brilliantly intellectual, poetic and imaginative but rebellious young woman, which gave Breuer and Freud the first clue that her linguistic disturbance was related to her resentment at her ‘place’ as dutiful daughter of a decidedly patriarchal father, and thus deeply connected with her illness. After hypnosis, her capacity to speak coherently returned, and she spoke fluently in three other languages, though not in her native German. Through her dialogue with Breuer, and her ability to ‘work through’ her difficult relationship in relation to language, ‘Anna O’ gave the first example of the ‘talking cure’ which, of course, then provided the whole basis for Freud’s subsequent development of the psycho- analytic method. So we are looking, in this image, at the ‘birth’ of two new psychiatric epistemes: Charcot’s method of hypnosis and the conditions which later produced psychoanalysis. FIGURE 1.8 André Brouillet, A Clinical Lesson at La Salpêtriére (given by Charcot), 1887 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 37 18/04/2013 12:23:53 PM 40 Representation [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, 212) 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 constitu- tion 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 knowl- edge 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 peri- ods. 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 power/knowledge. 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 regula- tion. All discourses, then, construct subject-positions, from which alone they make sense. This approach has radical implications for a theory of representation. For it suggests that dis- courses themselves construct the subject-positions from which they become meaningful and have effects. Individuals may differ as to their social class, gender, ‘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 power/knowledge. 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. 5.1 How to make sense of Velasquez’ Las Meninas Foucault’s The Order of Things (1970) opens with a discussion of a painting by the famous Spanish painter, Velasquez, called Las Meninas. It has been a topic of considerable scholarly debate and con- troversy. The reason I am using it here is because, as all the critics agree, the painting itself does raise certain questions about the nature of representation, and Foucault himself uses it to talk about these wider issues of the subject. It is these arguments which interest us here, not the question of whether 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 40 18/04/2013 12:23:54 PM 41 The Work of Representation Foucault’s is the ‘true’, correct or even the definitive reading of the painting’s meaning. That the painting has no one, fixed or final meaning is, indeed, one of Foucault’s most powerful arguments. The painting is unique in Velasquez’ work. It was part of the Spanish court’s royal collection and hung in the palace in a room which was subsequently destroyed by fire. It was dated ‘1656’ by Velasquez’ successor as court 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. FIGURE 1.9 Diego Velasquez, Las Meninas, 1656 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 41 18/04/2013 12:23:54 PM 42 Representation 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 him- self, 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 cen- tre 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 lead- ing 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). 5.2 The subject of/in representation Who or what is the subject of this painting? In his comments, Foucault uses Las Meninas to make some general points about his theory of representation and specifically about the role of the subject: 1 ‘Foucault reads the painting in terms of representation and the subject’ (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982, p. 20). As well as being a painting which shows us (represents) a scene in which a portrait of the King and Queen of Spain is being painted, it is also a painting which tells us something about how representation and the subject work. It produces its own kind of knowledge. Representation and the subject are the painting’s underlying message – what it is about, its sub-text. 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 42 18/04/2013 12:23:54 PM 45 The Work of Representation 6 CONCLUSION: REPRESENTATION, MEANING AND LANGUAGE RECONSIDERED We started with a fairly simple definition of representation. Representation is the process by which members of a culture use language (broadly defined as any system which deploys signs, any signify- ing system) to produce meaning. Already, this definition carries the important premise that things – objects, people, events in the world – do not have in themselves any fixed, final or true meaning. It is us – in society, within human cultures – who make things mean, who signify. Meanings, conse- quently, will always change, from one culture or period to another. There is no guarantee that every object in one culture will have an equivalent meaning in another, precisely because cultures differ, sometimes radically, from one another in their codes – the ways they carve up, classify and assign meaning to the world. So one important idea about representation is the acceptance of a degree of cultural relativism between one culture and another, a certain lack of equivalence, and hence the need for translation as we move from the mind-set or conceptual universe of one culture or another. We call this the constructionist approach to representation, contrasting it with both the reflec- tive and the intentional approaches. Now, if culture is a process, a practice, how does it work? In the constructionist perspective, representation involves making meaning by forging links between three different orders of things: what we might broadly call the world of things, people, events and experiences; the conceptual world – the mental concepts we carry around in our heads; and the signs, arranged into languages, which ‘stand for’ or communicate these concepts. Now, if you have to make a link between systems which are not the same, and fix these at least for a time so that other people know what, in one system, corresponds to what in another system, then there must be some- thing which allows us to translate between them – telling us what word to use for what concept, and so on. Hence the notion of codes. Producing meaning depends on the practice of interpretation, and interpretation is sustained by us actively using the code – encoding, putting things into the code – and by the person at the other end interpreting or decoding the meaning (Hall, 1980). But note that, because meanings are always changing and slipping, codes operate more like social conventions than like fixed laws or unbreak- able rules. As meanings shift and slide, so inevitably the codes of a culture imperceptibly change. The great advantage of the concepts and classifications of the culture which we carry around with us in our heads is that they enable us to think about things, whether they are there, present, or not; indeed, whether they ever existed or not. There are concepts for our fantasies, desires and imagin- ings as well as for so-called ‘real’ objects in the material world. And the advantage of language is that our thoughts about the world need not remain exclusive to us, and silent. We can translate them into language, make them ‘speak’, through the use of signs which stand for them – and thus talk, write, communicate about them to others. Gradually, then, we complexified what we meant by representation. It came to be less and less the straightforward thing we assumed it to be at first – which is why we need theories to explain it. We looked at two versions of constructionism – that which concentrated on how language and 01-Hall_Ch-01.indd 45 18/04/2013 12:23:54 PM 46 Representation signification (the use of signs in language) works to produce meanings, which after Saussure and Barthes we called semiotics; and that, following Foucault, which concentrated on how discourse and discursive practices produce knowledge. I won’t run through the finer points in these two approaches again, since you can go back to them in the main body of the chapter and refresh your memory. In semiotics, you will recall the importance of signifier/signified, langue/parole and ‘myth’, and how the marking of difference and binary oppositions are crucial for meaning. In the discursive approach, you will recall discursive formations, power/knowledge, the idea of a ‘regime of truth’, the way discourse also produces the subject and defines the subject-positions from which knowledge proceeds and, indeed, the return of questions about ‘the subject’ to the field of represen- tation. In several examples, we tried to get you to work with these theories and to apply them. There will be further debate about them in subsequent chapters. Notice that the chapter does not argue that the discursive approach overturned everything in the semiotic approach. Theoretical development does not usually proceed in this linear way. There was much to learn from Saussure and Barthes, and we are still discovering ways of fruitfully applying their insights – without necessarily swallowing everything they said. We offered you some critical thoughts on the subject. There is a great deal to learn from Foucault and the discursive approach, but by no means everything it claims is correct and the theory is open to, and has attracted, many criticisms. Again, in later chapters, as we encounter further developments in the theory of represen- tation, and see the strengths and weaknesses of these positions applied in practice, we will come to appreciate more fully that we are only at the beginning of the exciting task of exploring this process of meaning 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. BARTHES, R. (1975) The Pleasure of the Text, New York, Hall & Wang. BARTHES, R. (1977) Image-Music-Text, Glasgow, Fontana. BRYSON, N. 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