excerpt from informeorientrembling, 2010
(here, references to Pitkin’s work relate to: The Concept of Representation, 1967)
Lisa Disch announces that by developing a critique of representational standing for — as Pitkin acknowledges that there is no room for creativity and initiative to take place within descriptive representation, which is centered on passing information –, Pitkin effects a decisive break with “mirror” theories of representation, which is one significant step away from referentiality[1].
In a political context, symbolic representation, in its turn, establishes itself as an activity, existing in the effecting of an identification or an alignment of wills between representative and represented. In this way, it involves the question of how each of those parts (can) influence(s) the other; soon we get introduced to a couple of potential dangers it might bring with itself: as it might call forth the same irrational and affective elements produced by flags and hymns and marching bands[2] that have no relation any longer with an alignment of wills, that is, in its extreme, it might become a fascist version of representation, as the represented might reflect the representative instead of influencing him or her –– an inverse representation[3]. Here we fall off the realm of representation, since what takes life is an unilateral power relation that breaks the one premise brought about in the etymological innards of the word re-presentation, that the represented must somehow be logically prior; the representative must be responsive to him rather than the other way around[4]
Pitkin insists on considering what happens during representation, the substantive component of representation, she searches for a way of acting that would embody in an equivalent way the correspondence that maps establish to what they represent; what concerns the concept of accuracy, Disch –– in her turn –– questions if this is a concept that should at all take part in a theory of representation. She concludes that in the core of Pitkin’s thinking one finds two aspects: equivalence and paradoxical requirement. The first one means a relative equivalence between the representative and the represented, so that the latter could conceivably have acted for himself instead[5]. The paradox requirement entails being represented means being made present in some sense, while not really being present literally or fully in fact.[6] Disch questions if this paradox is inherent in representation and resorts to Derrida, who set himself, in Speech and Phenomena written in 1967 as well, to put apart the idea that something has to exist prior to its representation: on Derrida’s account, representation does not re-present. Rather it participates in creating the allegedly independent entities for which it claims only to stand, and, by ‘etymological’ feint, reaffirms the dualistic ontology that lends credibility to the idea that they are independent. As Derrida puts it with characteristic elegance: ‘the presence-of-the-present is derived from repetition and not the reverse’[7].
Surprisingly in accordance with Derrida’s ideas, Disch moves on to figure out that Pitkin conceives of a public representation –– a mode of one-to-many, opposed to a private and conservative one-to-one representation –– that is intrinsically and inevitably transformative[8], since it allows a crowd to emerge from its diffuseness as it gathers around an interest or principle in such way that they become an entity they would not form otherwise, that is, without the process of representation –– the collective body is not given a priori of the act of representation. It follows that the represented must be in a position of acting independently as well, not just being taken care of, and that there is a potential for conflict between represented and representative –– at the same time, one of the tasks of political representation is precisely to attempt to sort out those conflicts. (…) political representation produces the terms on which it is to be judged. (…) this reorientation casts representation as an activity of articulation: it does not refer to a prior unity but proposes ideals for the purpose of calling out constituencies and linking them together.[9] In public representation the representative process is not born from actions of any of its participants, but from the over-all arrangement and functioning of a system –– in which public’s interests responsiveness should be the ground and exceptions might be occasions in which non-responsiveness is justified in regard of those same interests. This is a decentering of representation that opens a potential for quite a radical impact –– in Pitkin’s world, however, it gets hold back by a retreat to thinking of and around responsiveness in a referential manner, premised on an etymological approach to re-presentation.
Taking flight in her own thinking and using a work by Bernard Manin as support, Disch clarifies that whenever the gap between represented and representative tends to disappear, one falls into a regime of absolute representation, in which there would be no room for dissent –– preserving that distance is essential. She finds a formulation of representation that is striking in its elegance: representation is ruling us in our own name. Representation is ruling, a hierarchal power relation. It is ruling ‘us’, a collectivity that recognizes itself as such, that imagines itself as somehow distinct. It is ruling us in ‘our own name’. What a peculiar locution – our own name. Not our given name but our own name, in other words, a name that is not simply ascribes or imputed to us but one with which we identify, to which we may or may not respond.[10] She asserts that by speaking of in one’s own name instead of on one’s behalf opens the possibility of breaking with a referential understanding of representation and for closing the loophole of discretion[11].
(…) [later, Rancière comes in]
According to him, aesthetic representation generates constraints in three ways: by creating a dependency of the visible on speech, by adjusting the relationship between what is understood or anticipated and what comes as a surprise, according to the paradoxical logic analysed by Aristotle’s Poetics[12] –– ordering deployment of meanings –– which results in fostering a logic of gradual revelation and –– finally –– by forming, in the movement of adjusting reality, a dual accommodation: on one hand, ontological consistency and ethical exemplariness are relegated as fiction emerges, however on the other hand fictional entities are beings of resemblance whose actions are to be shared and appreciated. In the context of performance, how could it happen that, and what might happen when, the reassuring world of representation breaks down? I take that possible answers have rather to do with how than with what.
Rancière’s first point of the dependency of the visible on speech can be looked at in terms of how the body is approached wherever it appears: if submitted to all the hierarchies of rationality it will most likely fall into the restraints mentioned by him, and else, if its presence is allowed to be born in its own right, out of its inherent necessities, one can maybe perceive a move beyond those logics –– here we are back to a conception of embodiment which has its affective potentials enhanced. Concerning a gradual logic of revelation: control over that can only be secured in works that keep the voices of an outside world at a reasonably safe distance –– minimizing to the maximum any possible interference of chance in the development of the desired action; chance, with the strength and eventual violence which it makes itself present, mostly can not be ignored and is usually rather difficult to be countered: if welcomed, the habits of a structure are brought to live with and by a margin of deviation[13] before it ends in disorder. The last point on beings of resemblance could as well possibly find a transmutation into another nature when works come into be(com)ing as products of negotiation with an audience, which entails another level of engagement.
[1] (www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf)
[2] (Pitkin, 1967: 106)
[3] Ernest Barker quoted in Pitkin (Pitkin, 1967: 109)
[4] (Pitkin, 1967: 140)
[5] (Pitkin, 1967: 140)
[6] (Pitkin, 1967: 153)
[7] (www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf)
[8] (www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf)
[9] (www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf)
[10] (www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf)
[11] (www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf)
[12] (Rancière, 2000: 114)
[13] (Massumi, 1992: 57)