Evocative representation

Abstract

This article ismotivated by one central question: when do we say that representation has been achieved well, and how can we be wrong? In asking this question I am interested in finding the norm internal to political representation. My assumption is that the norm of representation is discernible through how we speak about representation, and indeed how we speak when we represent. In other words, I propose a foundationalist norm. The argument will first spell out what is meant by a norm and then present a constructivist account of representation that a foundationalist normative approach must address. I then argue, using Cora Diamond's writings on ethics and Viveiros de Castro's ontology, that the norm of representation is tied to articulating someone's life, to evoking them, or more precisely to making it absolutely transparent that someone has a life.1 My argument is that representing well is fundamentally tied to engaging the moral imagination in the sympathetic exercise of understanding another embodied perspective. I spend some time expanding on this, what I call evocative representation. I show how a foundationalist account of when we say that representation has been achieved well gives us grounds for judging the merits of any particular representation. Although what is normative of representation gives grounds for judgingwell accomplished representative processes, it does not insulate us against misrepresentation; indeed, misrepresenting is a possibility internal to representation; a failure of themoral imagination being written into its very nature.