Page 60 - Critical and Cultural Theory

REPRESENTATION
particular, do not reflect the reality of space itself but rather
cultural perceptions of it. 5
The idea that the world may be objectively perceived and repre-
sented by establishing one correct way of seeing has recently been
questioned by digital vision. Electronic technology often fosters
multi-perspectivalism: computers frequently employ two cameras,
which see differently just as human eyes do. The displacement of
the single eye, moreover, goes hand in hand with the displacement
of the T. Indeed, the digital representation of the T emphasizes
its shifting and wandering nature. According to Sean Cubitt, the
subject T has two digital correlatives: 'the blinking cursor/inser-
tion point that stands just ahead of every last letter' and the
'nomadic I-bar/arrow and its various metamorphoses - the
pointer-tool'. Both of these functions metaphorically underscore
the rootless status of the T: 'The cursor as perpetual tourist
meanders through a landscape which is always foreign' and the
pointer 'circulates', seeking 'a home from which its very freedom
has exiled it'. Moreover, the movements of the digital T are repre-
sented by a blind toy: a mouse that 'runs its errands tail-first'
(Cubitt 1998: 88-91).
The interplay of representation and ideology described in
relation to perspectivalism is further borne out by the fact that all
cultures and traditions of thought have inevitably relied upon
symbolic and mythical constructs which people have (implicitly or
explicitly) been required to assimilate and internalize. Even
cultural trends and philosophical movements apparently
committed to dismantling those constructs have themselves
depended on imaginary representations for the sake of advancing
particular ideological agendas. This is one of the main arguments
pursued by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in Dialectic of
Enlightenment (1944). Here the two critics propose that although
the objective of the Enlightenment was, ostensibly, to liberate
people from irrational fears and illusions nurtured by mythology
and its representations, it ultimately proved analogous to myth
itself. The Enlightenment aspired to transcend explanations of life
and the universe which it regarded as fictitious, in order to attain
to putatively deeper and higher truths. However, it was itself
caught up in a chain of ideological mystifications. No sooner is an

5
I»- See Part III, Chapter 3, 'Space'.
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