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A focus on representation occludes the non-representational?
A third major objection to my broad definition of representation as a social
practice is that, notwithstanding my first line of defence previously, I'm
underestimating the importance of the 'non-representational' element in
all our lives. The social sciences and humanities have undergone some-
thing of a 'post-representational turn' in the past decade. I can't describe
this turn in sufficient detail here. Glossing, it's been suggested by some
critics that, through the 1980s and 1990s, too many analysts became preoc-
cupied with discourses, signs and symbols. These analysts were charged with
overlooking the practical, affective and non-cognitive dimensions of our
daily lives. A related criticism was that these analysts lost sight of the mate-
rial world to which the representations they were 'deconstructing' referred,
including our own bodily sensorium. This world, it's been argued, tends to
exceed any attempts to 'fix' its meaning or content in specific signs (words,
images, scientific papers, maps and so on). Accordingly, various forms of
'non-representational theory', to use geographer Nigel Thrift's (2007) port-
manteau term, have focussed on the emotional, embodied, pre/unconscious
and somatic aspects of human engagement with other people and the
non-human world. The central argument is that much of what matters in
our lives is irreducible to the creation, circulation and effects of various
representations.
This argument is undoubtedly persuasive. Yet in this topic I devote lit-
tle or no space to the domain of the 'non-representational'. Am I therefore
at fault? Yes, or so might say the editors of a book like Nature performed
(Szersynski et al ., 2003), one of several works on 'nature' that deliberately de-
emphasise representation. But I'd make the following points in my defence.
First, to acknowledge that the 'non-representational matters' is not to imply
that representation does not. Indeed, to advocate that more attention should
be paid to the non -representational is surely to imply and acknowledge that
representation is socially real and materially efficacious. Second, there's
the risk of creating a false dualism between the representational and puta-
tively non-representational. As cultural geographer Catherine Nash noted,
'the turn away from language and texts in non-representational theory
...
seems to require a new version of an old division between thought and
action,
...
mind and body' (Nash, 2000: 657). Representations of various
kinds are not, or not only, the antithesis of things like emotion, affect,
human embodiment or human practice. Nor, as I suggested earlier, are they
synonymous with speech and sight only. On the contrary, they can pro-
foundly shape our feelings, dispositions, and habits of action in the broadest
sense. For instance, consider how the world-famous nature photography of
Ansel Adams has long inspired, excited and moved millions of people in
the United States and beyond. Or consider how mainstream, highly nor-
mative ideas about heterosexuality lead many individuals to feel intense
guilt, shame and anxiety as they come to recognise their own homosexual
 
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