Questioning Representation

The very idea that we could have a theory about mental or linguistic representations which would not be a “game” theory –which would find representations which stood in “natural” rather than conventional relations to the objects represented–is so odd that only something like Heidegger’s view of the West as obsessed with the “metaphysics of presence” can account for it.

(Rorty 1982, 133)

[The] linguistic turn may be seen as a device for continuing to treat thoughts as objective and utterly disparate from mental events, without having recourse to the platonistic mythology. There is therefore a danger in reversing the priority of language over thought …: the danger of falling back into psychologism.

(Dummett 1993, 129)

The Danger of Falling Back into Psychologism

There are two ways in which postmodernity has been defined, or defines itself, as an event of representation. On the one hand, there is the approach usually associated with cultural studies, post-colonial theory, postmodern theory and literary theory. On this account of post-modernism–an account more often described by its detractors than put forward by any actual proponents–there is nothing outside representation. Truth, the real, legitimation, philosophy and the world are effects of textuality. This strong constructivism or representationalism is rarely, if ever, met with, and tends to provide a point of lament rather than any actual target. Nevertheless, there is a dominant movement across a number of disciplines that affirms the primacy and limits of representation. When Richard Rorty (1982) defines philosophy as a “kind of writing” he expresses a typical uptake of post-structuralism that sets itself the task of overcoming foundationalism, legitimation and the questioning of the world in any grand sense. This branch of postmodern theory is remarkably homely. It stresses the inevitability and desirability of remaining within the world, and at one with the domain of representation. The idea of a critical or transcendental position is not only deemed impossible but is criticized for its alienation from everyday life. [End Page 47] Against the legitimating meta-narratives of modernity, post-modernism returns all those grand truth claims to the domain of representation.