Analysis of Representation in the Modern World

Jumpstart Unit: Representation

Through various encounters with people, I seem to have created the idea that the representations of ourselves, those around us, and indeed everything in our environment, are based mostly on the connections to things we know to be true. For example, an on-looking person knows that when they see another person crying, that person’s act represents a prior experience that may have been painful or depressing for them. The on-looking person may come to this conclusion because the last time they cried, it was caused by a sad event. While analogies like this may still hold water to a certain extent, W. J. T. Mitchell’s essay, Representation, espoused many ideas and concepts that expose many different ways of interpreting representation and how it conveys information. Mitchell discusses how representation often consists of substitutions for things that are being described or portrayed and things that may be theoretical or factual. Mitchell describes: “One crucial consideration that enters into any analysis of representation is the relationship between the representational material and that which it represents” (Mitchell 14). It is when various individuals substitute their own, different ideas for the things they witness and experience, that a strong presence of variability becomes present. Societal archetypes of how representation is used are abundant in the civilized world, like the relationship between modern governments and populations of people in countries, actors that play the role of fictional characters, or a book representing the life of a person. It is through these examples of representation that differing interpretations occur, sometimes leading to disorientation and confusion; confusion of what is real and what isn’t.

To fully understand how representations can cause disorientation, it is important to identify where they exist in society. The very political concepts upon which the U.S. government system is based embody representations; i.e. the representatives in the House of Representatives represent the people that live in the geographic area that they cover. Mitchell establishes this as the “political” side of representation, which consists of, “persons who ‘act for’ other persons” (Mitchell 11). He also names another type of representation, “aesthetic” representation, which is a direct substitution of “things