I.
Orientation
Representation is superfluous and impossible under two hypothetical
polar circumstances. The first assumes a primal and totally
ungoverned community in which all human beings are self generating,
independent, and act within an immediacy that is both spacial
and temporal: the will is articulated here and now. In this
condition of multiplicity and absolute difference the response
to the questions "Says who" and "Is this part
of your job?" is simply: 'I say, and I have no job. '
The second imagines a collection of automata evacuated of
will and functioning as mere conduits through which pass the
voice of a ruler, demon or God whose will is thus postponed
and extended. In this condition of singularity and similarity
the interrogatory must be satisfied by a peremptory response:
'The Other says so, and everything is part of my job.'
These two constructions of fantasy suggest that representation
is a tactic in the management of difference. It appears, that
is, wherever difference must be denied or overcome. It does
not create difference, nor does it cure or mend by substituting
similarity in the place where difference dominated. Rather,
representation heals by a movement of supplemental fracture;
by installing dualism where there had been mere difference.
Dualism rehabilitates difference because it divides in another
way or at another level. In private law, for example, every
client is different according to the character of her legal
involvement as well as in her capacity or ability to manage
the resolution of her legal affairs. The introduction of legal
counsel is intended to alleviate the strain on the principle
of legal equality created by this difference among a primary
clientele, but the presence of legal counsel supplements the
simple difference among clientele with a complex difference:
the primary legal actor is no longer the client but the lawyer,
and the lawyer does not always act for this client but may
appear for other clients or even speak for herself. Precisely
because the lawyer is never identified, in the strict sense,
with her client legal representation supplements an original
simple difference by arrangements which multiply and diversify
differences. In politics, by contrast, majoritarianism repairs
a diffusion of will or desire within a given multiplicity.
It cannot be understood as a merely practical technique since,
as a practical matter, the ultimate choice could be given
to the tallest individuals, or the smartest or the cutest
or the elders of the group. Majoritarianism elects to have
the multiplicity speak with the voice of its major-part, and
in doing so it substitutes a part-whole difference for the
primary difference that frustrated unanimity. Majoritarianism
does not simplify this original difference by introducing
similarity but adds another dimension of difference since
the 'major part' may not be identified, in the strict sense,
either with the units of the original multiplicity or with
the whole. Majoritarianism inserts a double dualism in the
place of an intransigent multiplicity: a dualism of majority-minority,
and a dualism of part-whole. It is in this sense that representation
is a tactic that manages difference by supplementation.
As
the two polar constructs suggest, the tactic for managing
difference may not simply reduce quantity or redesign the
boundaries of units and clusters. The tactic must focus on
difference as a specific problematic of presence along four
distinct frontiers: presence as an ontology, a situs, a relative
tangibility and a labile temporality. Representation is addressed
to Being and its absence; to here rather than there; to the
palpable and concrete marked off from the ideal and abstract;
to a now that is not then. Representation installs being in
the place of absence; proximates that which is otherwise distant;
concretizes the abstract; revives the past. Through representation
gods may speak, the dead dispose of their property and the
perpetually comatose claim their right to die with dignity;
through representation incarcerated madmen appear in court,
Iowa farmers protect parity pricing without leaving the barn
and starvation sheds a tear half-way around the world; through
representation patriotism becomes a flag, liberty a bell and
the torments of guilt 'Hamlet'; through representation yesterday's
sentence is today's execution, the intensity of 1917 brings
the blood to boil and contracts made in the state of nature
control our destiny.
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If we pose representation as a tactic engaged to manage difference
as a problematic of presence we have no reason to expect all
times and places attempting to deny or overcome the same form
of difference, or to have done so in precisely the same fashion.
Representation understood as a tactic thus permits a focus
on continuities and ruptures otherwise forbidden by the historical
contingency of language and the structures of Truth. This
is not the opening of a trans-historical 'method' but an expansion
of gaze and a deepening of curiosity. However,, the story
outlined in the text that follows is not organized around
this tactical relation of representation to difference and
presence in order to stay closer to the discourse in which
it is currently enclosed. But it will be far more interesting
if this general thesis is retained as a shadow following the
movements of the curious historical figures dominating the
analysis. In any event, techniques that determine the tone
or character of the difference rehabilitated by representation
may be suggested. There are four:
Difference may be simultaneously affirmed and elided by an
endowment that has the quality, in the particular context,
of a surplusage that swells the body it inhabits. The
classical instance of this technique is the priesthood. The
immediate effect of this status is to intensify the difference
between priests and those who are not by shrinking the gap
otherwise existing between mortals and the holiness towards
which they turn.
The difference between ideas and things, as well as that persisting
between ideas and their expression, is produced and undermined
by a technique of creative reflection according to
which ideas are produced in the reflection of things, or are
apparently assimilated to the mode of their expression. Perhaps
the best example of this is the perpetually disturbing question
of the representative as an independent being.
Absolute
difference may be undermined, softened or relativized by means
of a transmission between two or more entities, and this transmission
takes the form of an exchange mediated by a currency. In the
modern period, for example, ‘interests’ will provide
the currency for transmission between people and their representatives.
Difference is managed by an organization and distribution
of functions within a structure. The meaning of different
activities is given in the interplay of total structure and
particular function. Within a structured division of labor
officers with certain functions enclose and subsume the whole
and in this sense represent it.
At least tentatively, these are the techniques through which
representation is used to manage difference as a problematic
of presence..
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