representation

Representation refers to the way in which images and texts reconstruct, rather than reflect, the original sources they represent. Thus a painting, photograph, or written text about a tree is never an actual tree, but the reconstruction of what it seemed to be or meant to the person who represented it. If it were a tree, it could not then be a photograph, painting, or text.

Representation is an important concept in semiology , linguistics , Marxism , and feminism , and points to an aspect of the way in which meaning is constructed. It can therefore be understood as contributing importantly to social processes. Feminists argue that representation is continually creating, re-creating, and endorsing stereotypical ideas of gender identity . All media images-for example in advertising or cinema-are constructed by somebody, for a specific purpose with a specific audience in mind, although they are usually presented as if they were a ‘slice of reality’. To try and understand what they mean, and how they construct meaning, it is important to examine what lies behind the image or text: who constructed it, where and when, for what purpose, and for which particular audience's gaze . Because watchers rarely have access to this process, images in particular tend to classify complex ideas into apparently simple meanings; they thus deny contradiction and ambiguity, and representations become like myths which are nevertheless accepted as ‘real’. Feminist critics of pornography have used the idea of representation to develop theories of how pornography functions in society, and how it is represented in relation to class, race, and gender (see, The Pornography of Representation, 1986; and, Sociology and Visual Representation, 1994).