Page 63 - Critical and Cultural Theory

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tions (both conscious and unconscious) are like? Could we ever
assume that everybody represents the world according to analo-
gous criteria? If so, on what basis? These and related questions
have led to two main positions. On the one hand, there are critics
who endeavour to distinguish reality from illusion, reliable repre-
sentations from figments of the imagination, in the belief that a
solid and authentic reality lies behind its representations. On the
other hand, there are critics who maintain that no representation
is ultimately truer or more dependable than any other and that
even illusions have their own reality. Illusions, indeed, may make
reality more real by exhibiting familiar situations in distorted
guises and thus compelling us to reassess their conventional
meanings. The ambivalent status of representations, thrown into
relief by these contrasting attitudes, is comparable to the ambigu-
ity surrounding the concept of 'imagination'. The Greek term for
'imagination', phantasia (from phos = light), posits the imagina-
tion as an enlightening faculty through which we form images of
the world and from which thoughts, opinions and memories
proceed. Yet, this same faculty is also associated with idle
musings, fictions and visions and accordingly branded as unreli-
able.
The very etymology of 'representation' is ambiguous. The Latin
word repraesentatio - from which 'representation' derives - is
related to praesens, the participle of praeesse. This verb means 'to
be before' in a double sense: i.e. spatially and hierarchically. It
could refer to a person or object 'being ahead' or 'in front of
someone or something else in space, or to a person or object
'being superior' to someone or something else in a system of
power. (By extension, what is present to us is not merely some-
thing that stands before us in a physical sense but also something
that imposes itself upon us in a figurative sense as powerful and
commanding.) In the field of rhetoric, 8 'representation' refers to
the ability to evoke a vivid impression of presence through words
and figures of speech. According to the Roman writer Quintilian,
in particular, it denotes a flair for making things bright and
striking and thus stimulating an audience's imagination. The issue
of a representation's relation to principles of truth and falsity

8 §*" Definitions of this discipline and an outline of its aims and methodologies
are supplied in Part I, Chapter 3, 'Rhetoric'.

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