Ghost in the Wire

On the one hand, and I want to begin with this hypothesis, any question of representation is necessarily diachronic in its structure. A re-presentation is always an attempt at a second present, even if this second present is merely repetition (which is the case when we assume representation to be transparent, or merely a conduit for information that changes not the content of the information itself). In a sense, we might say that representation is the movement by which the time of composition and the time of reception is bridged (though probably never fully successfully), in that whatever the book presents in the moment of its composition is transmitted as a present in the moment of reception. In other words, the representation allows for a repetition that gives a text its textuality, its ability to stand in and construct a sort of structuring fiction (this is true for non-fiction, too, obviously), and to do this "standing in" over and over and over again.

Of course, this second presentation is never merely a repetition, because the process of representation is neither simple nor transparent. There's no need here to go into the history of hermeneutics or of deconstruction. Suffice it to say that few believe that representation happens free of a contamination of its content, and that as a consequence, representation will link composition and reception only through a structural failure that keeps the two related but incommensurate.

None of this should be surprising, right? What I have written so far is just an indirect way of pointing out that interpretation is hard, that mining intentionality from the conditions of composition (what Jasinski calls "thick context") rarely provides sufficient data from which to conclude or resolve a text's meaning, and that different texts will read differently for different people at different times. Scott hints at just this in his lecture, though he does so from a slightly different trajectory, and without spending more time thinking through the question of representation.

So perhaps we could leave the issue here, with the necessarily insolvent diachronic structure of representation at work, a description of the problem that doesn't really add anything new other than to note the importance that representation's temporality plays in bringing about some of the obvious interpretive issues.

But on the other hand, and here's a second hypothesis, I think there's something much more radical about the temporality of representation. For as much as representation involves a failed diachronicity, there is something else going on, something achronic and interruptive about its structure, or more acurately: akairotic. Now kairos is, of course, the quality of "good timing," of saying the right thing at the right moment. But it is also the process of crafting time in such a way that the right moment becomes apparent. The punchline of a good joke, the division of history into BC and AD, or the phantasmatic rupture by which 9-11 "changed the world" - these are all kairotic operations. But representation, which makes possible these kairotic operations, also necessarily undoes their actuality (the conditions of possibility here are, in other words and not surprisingly, also the conditions of kairotic impossibility), because for any of these signifiers to "mean" beyond the kairotic moment itself, there must be the capacity to re-present the singular moment of kairos as a generic and primal scene. No matter the changes in our understanding of 9-11, no matter the distance from that odd bit of shorthand, 9-11 offers itself as a rupture in history each time the expression is mobilized. It does this regardless of its political placement and philosophical precepts; this is one of those instances in which, since the name is, as Lacan argues, the "ground of the thing," the very fact that the date has become the sign of the event already serves as a rupture within the general flow of chronology. And so 9-11 re-presents 9-11, repeatedly.

But with a difference of course, and this difference is worth some exploration. It's a diffference that appears as such not merely because of the passage of time and the increasing sense of distance between the now and the event (9-11) which serves as a horizon constructing this now. To believe that the passage of time generates a sense of distance would be to ignore Heidegger's critique of metaphysics tendency to spatialize time; instead, it makes more sense to say that repetition itself creates distance. Each repetition differs from previous representations in the same way: the newer representation contains within it the legacy and inheritance of all the older ones. It's like the old joke about Returnit and Repeatit sitting on a pier. When Returnit falls off, who is left? Answer: Repeatit! Very well, then: Returnit and Repeatit are sitting on a pier. Returnit falls off, who is left? The joke repeats, but each repetition contains within it the knowledge that it is a repetition, and as such these "reps" function analagously to a casuistic stretching, one that creates a sense of distance not because of the passage of time but because of the accumulation of representations. Baudrillard refers to this proliferation of "reals" as "Integral Reality," a phrase that works well, I think.

Now none of this is to say that these differences - and the distances they engender - do anything to the content of what is represented. 9-11 is still a scary, pathos-laden, persuasive appeal to many, no matter how many times it's abused by Bush and friends. I'm talking about the temporal quality of representation here, and while I suspect there's something at work in terms of how these distances impact content, I'm not sure I can articulate it yet, and I'm not sure it's a generic enough effect to do so without focusing on a particular subject.

The other difference that needs to be attended to is obviously that of technics. Different media allow for different representations, and they also produce entirely different temporal rhythms. Some allow for feedback, some for reflection, some for immersion. There's a pantheon of concepts one could deploy here, from McLuhan to Kittler to Hansen, that might attempt to make sense of these differences. Suffice it to say, since I don't plan on writing forever, that some media are faster than others, some disseminate their representational content in a unidirectional and continuous matter, some integrate words and images, some operate through tactile interactions. The technics that make such mediations possible also produce different temporal rhythms, which means that the representational practices contained within each medium are going to function via different temporal modalities.

Now these different rhythms don't matter that much when you're only focusing on one medium. If you're reading a novel and you're doing so from within the temporal norms and conventions of print (which is, I suspect, what all depth hermeneutic models require), well these rhythms are neither manifestly obvious, nor are they something that need necessarily be taken into account. But if you're looking at how, say, public images influence discourse, you cannot simply contend that images operate from within the same temporal register as that of public discussion - unless, of course, your goal is to sublimate the former to the latter in an unannounced fashion. For those who, for example, follow Habermas, this might be a fun/fine thing to do. I tend to think it's an unproductive thing to do, one that includes within it a bit of interprative chicanery, but that's just me. Or alternately, if you're looking at a television show and doing an analysis that engages the show from within those temporal norms and conventions of print, wherein the televisual nature of the show matters not at all, this, too, will produce some serious gaps in the criticism. No reason to belabor this; it's a horse already slated to be put down. We'll just acknowledge its importance and agree that any temporal understanding of representation cannot simply dismiss the technological substrate that transmits the representation proper.

Two hypotheses then, though I suspect there are at least two others. But I'll wait to see if I can think through those a bit more before trying to articulate them.