Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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Conspiracy Theories of Representation

Noel Carroll
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 1987 17: 395
DOI: 10.1177/004839318701700306

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Pbil. Soc. Sci. 17 (1987) 395-412

Conspiracy Theories of Representation

NOEL CARROLL, Philosophy, Weskyan University

Looking at the political landscape of America today, one is forced to admit a

major change in the climate from that of the late sixties and early seventies and
the crises of Vietnam and Watergate. Everyone would agree, I think, that the
country is now far more conservative. However, there is at least one arena
where conservatism and even liberalism are on the run. That is in the area of the
contemporary study and theory of the arts. There, the temper is decidedly
radical. I hasten to add, immediately, that the radical temperament of which I
speak is not to be found primarily or significantly in the study of philosophical
aesthetics as that subject is pursued by organizations such as the American
Society for Aesthetics. Rather the politicized approach to the arts and the
theories that underwrite it have been developed and popularized in the environs
of language and literature departments, cinema and art history departments, and
even dance departments. Often new labels-such as semiotics and cultural
studies-are adopted to accommodate the novel emphases of the contemporary
theorists of the arts. As these new titles suggest, the politicized theorists study
neither art nor the respective arts in isolation, but rather they study the role and
function of art within society at large, in terms of what are thought of as our
signifying practices. And because they endorse the sixties slogan that everything
social is political, many contemporary theorists identify their task as the con-
struction of analytic frameworks that will enable them to pinpoint and unmask
the ideological factors in operation in any artwork, indeed in any representation
from David's Oat11of the Horatii and, obviously, Velasquez' Las hfeninas to
deodorant ads, the Muppets and the six o'clock news. Indeed, as this inventory
might indicate, the ascendant academic theory does not conceive of itself as
aesthetics but rather identifies itself as a species of social theory, viz., critical
social theory.
A sociological explanation of the rise of the current socio-political tendency in
art theory is not hard to come by. A new generation of academics has matured
and is acquiring academic power. That generation, of course, is the generation
whose rites of passage were performed in the late sixties and early seventies.
Now they are publishing, getting tenure, editing journals and book series,
arranging conferences, hiring colleagues, training graduate students, etc. There
is nothing sinister in this. They are doing what academics normally do. But
because they are entering the productive phase of their careers, their values
supply the pervasive colouration in their fields.
What are some of those values? Though this generation of academics was
trained, in high school and in college, by the followers of New Criticism who
urged them not to stray from the text itself, this generation revolted, as you will
recall, demanding relevance. As graduate students and now professors, they
prefer those avenues of research-such as semiotics, Marxism, hermeneutics,
reception theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, genealogy & la Foucault, decon-
struction, etc.-which they feel, rightly or wrongly, will provide a means of
discussing relevance and for continuing the revolt against their formalist

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396 Noel Cnrroll

forebears. Those students of yesteryear have found a more effective means of

taking over college buildings than hlark Rudd ever dreamed of. They just stayed
in school, and now they are becoming the faculty senate.
Again, I must stress that this phenomenon is more in evidence outside philos-
ophy, in the burgeoning fields of literary theory, film theory, fine art criticism
and so on. The reasons philosophical aesthetics has stood generally aloof from
the tendencies of contemporary art theory would require an essay unto itself.
Nevertheless, philosophers cannot avoid contact with the new political theory of
the arts much longer. For students, tutored by teachers in other fields, are
entering aesthetics classes with strong political sensibilities. One colleague told
me, exasperated, that in a class on Of the Standard of Taste, all the students
were interested in saying was that Hume was elitist.
Though the shift toward a political-theoretical approach to the analysis of the
arts is on the upsurge, it is not a monolithic movement. The methodologies
displayed in New Gerriiari Critique are not the same as those found in Diacritics,
Eiiclitic and Sirbstntice, and all these diverge from the types of analysis found in
the arts coverage in Socialist Revolution. However, one politico-theoretical
approach does appear to be more ascendant than the others. In terms of its
sources, one might say that it is more French than German. Barthes rather than
Iser, Althusser rather than Habermas, Demda rather than Gadamer along with
Lacan, Kristeva, Benveniste, Saussure, Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, Baudril-
lard, Genette, Macheray, etc., are its references. Loosely, proponents of this
approach might be called politicized post-structuralists, in contrast to non-
politicized post-structuralists such as the late Paul de Man. Though there are
many variations in this group as well, there is nevertheless an emerging party
line, codified in the glut of textbooks now available in fields such as literature,
cinema and what is called cultural studies. Here I have in mind the influential
New Accents series published by Methuen--containing Catherine Belseys
Critical Practice, Antony Easthopes Poetry ns Discourse, Christopher Noms
Decotistrirctioti, Dick Hebdiges Sribciiltrrre: The hfeanitzg of Style, Fatrick
Pamnders Fatztnsy: The Literntiwe of Subversion-as well as Routledge and
Kegan Pauls Latigrrage ntid hlaterinlisrti by Rosalind Coward and John Ellis,
and Oxfords The Sirbject of Semiotics by Kaja Silverman. The politicized
post-structuralist approach extends beyond academic journals to magazine and
newspaper coverage in such publications as Art in America and New York Citys
The Villnge Voice. If any form of contemporary arts criticism has a right to claim
that it is thriving, politicized post-structuralism does.
The purpose of this paper is to examine, critically, one tenet of politicized
post-structuralism, viz., that representation in art, and, indeed, representation
in mass media, is inherently ideological. That is, the practice, or, more invidi-
ously, the regime of representation has built into it negative political capacities
apart from the points of view or thematic commitments that a given work may
offer about whatever it represents. Representation itself is an agency through
which the domination of the statirs quo is sustained. Moreover, we are unaware
of the ideological machinations representation, as such, works on us. It is in this
regard that the politicized post-structuralists view of representation is what
I call conspiratorial. On the other hand, post-structura1,ists offer us different
accounts of the ideological operation of representations. Hence, there are sev-
eral conspiracy theories of representation before us today.
Politicized post-structuralists claim that representation is ideologically SUS-
pect because it supposedly supports a range of disreputable effects. These can be
variously named the illusion effect, the transparency effect and the naturaliza-

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 Cotispirclcy Theories of Represeritcltiott 397

tion effect. Some theorists will use these concepts as cognates, though I hope to
indicate the ways in which they differ. Also, since some theorists do not rely on
all these effects-for example, many avoid reference to illusion-I think it best to
refrain from lumping all these items together. I will attempt to show that none of
these effects are plausible ones to attribute to representation in art or mass media
tolit court. And I will also try to offer a diagnosis of the factors that lead
post-structuralists to mobilize explanations in terms of these effects in the
service of ideological analysis.
But before initiating this project, I must be permitted one caveat, even if it
turns out that everyone rejects it. I do not accept specific post-structuralist
accounts of the inherently ideological nature of representation. However, I am
not opposed to analyses of the ideological dimensions of either works of art or
the products of mass media. I have indulged in both myself. Nor does opposition
to ideological studies across the board follow from anything in this paper. I have
not written a rearguard formalist tract nor an elaborate vote for Reagan. I believe
one can be opposed to specific theses of post-structuralism without being reac-
tionary, though I suppose most post-structuralists will, perhaps self-servingly,
snigger at such a pleading.
Politicized post-structuralists hold that representation is inherently ideologi-
cal, i.e., inherently in the service of oppression. A representation as such
possesses some politically discreditable effect independently of what it repre-
sents. The first question we must ask concerns the scope of representation in
this proclamation, which is often, inadvisably, called a critique. Does it refer to
language in general, to literature, to the novel, to a Monet painting of a haystack,
or to a Mondrian abstraction that the painter thought represented ultimate
reality? Actually you can find some politicized post-structuralists who are
willing to extend their criticism of representation to all these things.
Undoubtedly the most perplexing of these extensions is that language in
general-not merely certain usages such as man as a synonym for
humanity-is inherently ideological, inherently in the service of oppression.
For one would have thought that language was just the medium in which
opposing political positions, including emancipatory ones, were articulated, and
not a medium inherently committed to the side of the oppressor. The post-
structuralists grounds for the notion that language is ideological depend upon
elaborate extrapolations from the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan. The mere
exposition of this theory could occupy the rest of our day. However, it is not
clear that we cannot proceed by examining the post-structuralist attack without
broaching the question of whether language is inherently ideological. For, in
practice, most politicized post-structuralist criticism is directed at representa-
tion where the effective scope of the concept is far narrower than language in
general.
What is debunked, by theorists, as inherently ideological is something called
realism or classic realism, roughly what in ordinary language we would call
representational art (along with representational mass media). The post-
structuralist is vexed by things like photographs, novels, paintings proposing a
relation of similitude to their referents, Hollywood films, TV soap operas and
police shows, the advertisements for Calvin Klein underwear and so on. Classic
Realism does not simply refer to a particular art movement such as the one
Courbet affiiiated with, though Courbet is a classic realist. Nor is realism simply
Naturalism. It is to be contrasted with abstractionism, especially Modernist
abstractionism, in visual media, and to the structural ploys of the New Novel B la
Robbe-Grillet in temporal media. Unfortunately, throughout this paper, we will

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398 Noel Carroll

have to rely on our everyday intuitions about the works the post-structuralists
consider realist representations, since, in practice, post-structuralists appear to
presume that we all know what they are referring to when they speak of realism.
It is also important to note that though the type of representation that concerns
the post-structuralist can be circumscribed, roughly, by an historical
category-the practices of representation falling in line with the dominant sensi-
bility from the Renaissance to the advent of Modemism-nevertheless, the
vocabulary used by post-structuralists to criticize representation is not medium
specific. That is, the same language is used to describe the pernicious effects of
representational paintings, movies, novels, plays, advertisements, photographs,
songs and so on. Whether the representational form is, in Arthur Dantos
terminology, rooted in recognizable mimesis, intelligible diegesis, or a combina-
tion thereof, its ideological effects can, for the politicized post-structuralist, be
analyzed by means of the same analytic framework.
Since realistic representation is ideological independently of its theme, it must
have some ideological effect that is a function of this type of representation as
such. My strategy will be to examine the alternate formulations that have been
offered of this effect, rejecting each candidate in turn. I lack a single argument
that shows that every conspiracy theory is doomed to failure. However, by
challenging the viability of the illusion effect, the transparency effect and the
naturalization effect, I think that I can thrust the burden of proof back to the
post-structuralist in a way that requires him to produce a new and finally
plausible account of the conspiracy theory in order to sustain the thesis that
representation is ideological.
Let us first consider the illusion effect. Here the operative notion is that the
pernicious effect of the art and media that post-structuralists dub realist repre-
sentations is the illusion of reality. Admittedly, reference to the illusion effect is
more a trope of the seventies than of the eighties, and it is more often employed
with reference to arts which propose a dimension of visual verisimilitude rather
than literature; however, examples of reference to the illusion effect can still be
found in the eighties as well as examples that apply the concept of illusion to
writing. The initial source of this particular criticism of representation appears
to be Brecht. Post-structuralists were attracted to Brecht indirectly by two
factors-Brecht was an important influence for Jean Luc Godard, an exemplary
artist for post-structuralists, as well as a central reference point for Roland
Barthes, perhaps the exemplary, European, post-structuralist critic. Though
Brecht is hardly consistent on this matter, in his railing against traditional theatre
he accuses the representational practices of this genre with inducing illusions of
reality and, furthermore, with inducing the illusion that things-e.g., social
relations-annot be This latter illusion, in turn, is claimed to be a
causal effect of the initial illusion of reality. Overwhelmed by the seeming reality
before him, the spectators critical powers are paralyzed so that he cannot
conceive of any way in which the actions before him could be otherwise; they
are experienced as real rather than fictional. That is, the world o n stage is pur-
portedly experienced as necessary due to the illusion of reality, thus supposedly
rendering revolutionary countermeasures inconceivable.
1 For an example of illusion terminology in the eighties, see Craig Owens, The Pro-
scenic Event, in Air and America. Dec. 1981. For an example of illusion terminology
used in regard to literature, see Rosalind Coward and John Ellis, Language and
Materialism. London 1977, pp. 46-47.
2 Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theater. ed. and trans. J. Willet, New York 1964, see
especially pp. 203 and 219.

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 Conspiracy Theories of Represerttrrtion 399

If Brecht supplied a major source for the notion of illusion, post-structuralists

concerned with visual media, such as film. painting and photography, also
appropriated the anti-illusionism of Clement Greenberg as part of their a n a l y ~ i s . ~
Greenberg excoriated traditional painting for promoting the illusion of depth,
whereas, he claimed, painting was by nature flat. Thus, the representational
of realist films, photography and painting came to be criticized by
pst-structuralists for their imposture of three-dimensionality.
The issue of whether the effect promoted by representational theatre, film and
painting is one of illusion has been effectively challenged by many authors.
Taken literally, the thesis appears to claim that spectators confronted by repre-
sentations of apples are deceived-like those famous Greek birds-into believ-
ing that there are luscious, edible apples before them. This is just false. No one
thinks that the Empire State Building is in the screening room during King Kotig:
how could it be? Moreover, if people were deceived by representations, how
would we account for the very different cognitive and aesthetic, not to mention
behavioural, responses we make to representations as opposed to the things
which they represent. Typically, we must know we are viewing a painting in
order properly to respond to it as a representation; and typically we have this
knowledge and do respond appropriately. Furthermore, if we are not deceived
by representations as such, it becomes difficult to understand why we should
morally deprecate representations.
At this point, the predictable countermove is to claim that the term illusion of
reality does not entail that spectators are deceived, but that they are in some
other kind of state. Suspension of disbelief is a favourite term of art here.4 It
suggests that I do something to myself or that something happens to me when
confronted by a representation, something over and above recognizing what the
representation is a representation of. Phenomenologically I have no sense of such
an internal process. Nor am I inclined to believe that it is within my power to
convince myself that the painting before me is not a painting but the referent of
the painting. Of course, if it is said that the suspension of disbelief is something
that happens to me, then I must protest that I have no recollection of ever taking a
portrait tobe a person. Indeed, I always supposed that what suspendingdisbelief
amounted to was my decision not to criticize the improbability of the events in
certain stories-cg., Tarzan teaching himself to read. That is, suspension of
disbelief really means the bracketing of the criticism of improbabilities (rather
than, say, of immoralities) in certain appropriate circumstances. Refraining from
criticizing o r being bothered by implausibility is something that is in my power,
but it does not affect my beliefs. In fact, if this is the correct interpretation of the
suspension of disbelief, then in order to do it, I must be continually aware that I
am in a certain context-such as viewing a picture of the ninth circle of hell or
reading a fiction about life on Mars.
One might, like Gombrich? attempt to characterize my mental state before a
picture on the model of seeing as, following Wittgensteins account of ambigu-
OUS images like the duck-rabbit. First we see the traditional realist painting as
flat, then it appears to have depth-first it is a picture plane. then it is a
three-dimensional object. But the experience of ambiguous figures does not
appear to be a proper analog to my experience of viewing paintings. I do not
flip-flop between seeing painting as flat and then seeing their referents as
3 For an example of the appropriation of Greenberg-style anti-illusionism, see Noel
Burch and Jorge Dana, Propositions, Afterinrage, 5, 1974, 44.
4 Stephen Heath makes such a move in his Le Rre Noel, October, 24, 1983.
5 E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, London 1%2, p. 24.

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400 Noel Carroll

three-dimensional objects in the way that I shift from first seeing a duck and then
a rabbit. There are not complete transformations of my visual field. Nor are
there heuristic promptings or pointings, as there are with ambiguous images,
which will induce a flip-flop between two ways of seeing a representational
painting .
Furthermore, the Greenbergian formulation, that seeing a representational
painting causes a deceptive illusion that something flat is deep, misdescribes the
situation. When I focus on the scene in apainting, I do not see it as deep in some
univocal sense which is the logical contrary of flat. Rather, I perceive pictorial
depth, which is a technical term whose application is consistent with the notion
that, in a certain sense, the picture plane is flat. And, in any case, even if there
were a Greenbergian illusion of depth, how could the post-structuralist parlay
that into an ideological machination?
Here we will be reminded, 5 la Brecht, that even if the various illusions or
impressions of reality-said to be imparted by traditional representations-are
not themselves ideological, they nevertheless are causal factors in the produc-
tion of a consequent, ideological effect-throwing our critical faculties out of
gear in such a way that makes us accept depicted human actions and relations as
they way things must be. But this hypothesis does not square with the facts.
Novels are often written so that the reader is moved to criticize the statrrs quo
and to affirm that things ought to be otherwise. For example, consider Gorkys
Mother and Remarqoes All Quiet on the WesternFront. They imply that human
relations should be otherwise, while Looking Bnckwards and Typee attempt to
show that things could be otherwise. But how, qua representational fiction, are
these less exercises in classic realism than reactionary items such as Lord oftke
Flies or Ben Hirr? That is, it is within the rhetorical resources of traditional
representation to convey the possibility of social change. Reactionary fatalism is
not an invariant effect of representation. Indeed, recall that the theatre that upset
Brecht was often referred to as Aristotelean. And the plays that Aristotle used as
his data were, thematically speaking, fatalistic. But there is no reason to think
that independent of the details of particular stories, that stories, as such, are
fatalistic. Nor is there any reason to suppose that our critical faculties are
crippled by traditional representations whose thematic viewpoint we reject. Ira
Levins Deathrrap presupposes the old saw that human beings are inevitably
driven by envy and greed. But though I enjoyed the play and understood it, I did
not accept its world view, just as blacks in 1915 had no trouble rejecting Griffiths
Birth ofa Nation. Audience members who assent to the thematic commitments
of a given representation, I suspect, do so because they already accept the ideas
implicit in such works and not because of some peculiar ideologizing effect of
representation.
A denser account of the purported ideological illusion afforded by realist
representation in literature has been propounded by Coward and Ellis. They
write
... it does not matter that realism is produced by a certain use of language, by a complex
production; all that matters is the illusion, the story, the content. What we value is its truth
to life, the accuracy of its vision. We do not read Agatha Christie or John Braine for the
productivity of their language, we read for the story, the impression we produce of a real
world.
How does this happen?

6 Coward and Ellis. Language and hfaterialism, pp. 46-47.

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 Cotispiracy Tlieories of Represeiitatioti 401

This repression of production takes place because realism has as its basic philosophy of
language not a production (signification being the production of a signified through the
action of the signifying chain), but an identity: the signifier is treated as identical to a
[pre-existent] signified. The signifierand the signified are not seen as caught up together in
a process of production, they are treated as equivalents: the signifier is merely the
equivalent of its pre-established concept, but merely to express or communicate it. 'Not
only do the signifier and the signified seem to unite, but in this confusion, the signifier
Seems to be erasedor to become transparent so as to let the concept present itself, just as if
it were referring to nothing but its own presence' (Demda, Posirions, pp. 32-3). Language
is treated as though it stands in for. is identical with, the real world. The business of realist
writing is, according to its philosophy, to be the equivalent of a reality, to imitate it. This
*imitation' is the basis of realist literature and its technical name is mimesis, mimcry. The
whole basis of mimesis is that writing is a mere transcription of the real, carrying it over
into a medium that exists only as a parasitic practice because the word is identical to, the
equivalent of, the real world.'
This passage is somewhat confusing. In so far as it suggests that people take
what they encounter when they read to be the actual referent of the writing, the
preceding account is absurd. Furthermore, it cannot be the case that people
believe that what they read in realist novels refers to something that literally
happened, because novels are fictional and are clearly marked as such. But
Coward and Ellis suggest that there is yet another false belief that we fall err to
when we read the realist novel, an epistemological error. The nature of this error
is obscure. It is that we take the meanings of words and larger linguistic units to
mirror reality. This is something akin to presupposing that our concepts, the
signifieds in this jargon, reflect or correspond to things-in-themselves. So the
illusion promoted by representational realism is a form of naive epistemological
realism, which Ellis and Coward suspect on the grounds of Kantian-type linguis-
tic considerations.
I do not propose to enter the epistemological debate concerning realism and
anti-realism, though it pays to note that Ellis and Coward have not shown that
some variant of epistemological realism, other than naive realism, might not be
advisable, and that the relation between concepts and what they referto might be
formulated within that framework. Then, taking our cue from Coward and Ellis,
we might claim that it is this version of acceptable, non-naive, epistemological
realism which novels encourage.
But is it not strange to think that novels engender epistemological positions?
More precisely-do realist novels in any way lead their readers to believe naive,
epistemological realism? Does Feyerabend feel shaken after reading Enznra?
Like many philosophy teachers I have found that most of my students are
inveterate relativists as regards both morality and cognition. Would reading
novels sway them toward realism? I think not. They would explain away
any novel I gave them as reflective of merely the author's view or the views of
his society, reminding me, no doubt, that Eskimos see the world by means of
different conceptual schemata (different signifieds), ones that grew out of their
needs and history. I find it difficult to understand how a novel could lead
someone to naive realism,just by virtue of being a representation. If one has a n
epistemological view, one has it independently of reading novels, and if, for
example, one is a relativist or a critical realist already, one can accommodate
novels into one's framework with no tension. Nor does naive realism tally with
the practices of writing traditional realist representations; recall the strategies of
shifting and conflicting points of view.
7 Ibid.

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402 Noel Carroll

Perhaps Coward and Ellis think novels enjoin beliefs in the correspondence
theory of truth? But how would fictioris do that? Remember that the question
here is causal not philosophical-i.e., not whether the correspondence theory of
truth is adequate, but whether traditional novels could instill faith in it. Would a
correspondence theory of truth be a likely concomitant while either reading or
writing a tale by E. T. A. Hoffman? Turning to traditional visual representa-
tions, one can only wonder about the way in which a depiction of a Minotaur or a
Gremlin could inspire a chain of psychological events that culminates in felt
assent to the correspondence theory of truth. Until post-structuralists supply an
acceptable account of this, I think we can be comfortably sceptical about the
postulation that typical consumers of representational art suffer from epis-
temological illusions as the result of reading novels.
The idea of transparency occurred in the quotation from Coward and Ellis.
One of the most popular formulas for referring to the transparency effect is to say
that in the classic realist representation events and reality appear to narrate
themselves. In so far as proponents of this theory conceive of the transparency
effect in terms of illusions of reality, they are subject to the criticisms we have
already reviewed. However, even though post-structuralists are sometimes
careless in this matter, the transparency effect does seem distinguishable from
the illusion effect.
The account of the transparency effect is often introduced by a discussion of
the linguist Benvenistes distinction between two modes of narration: history
and discourse.s In narration that is dubbed history, there is no mention of you
or 1. Charles went to the movies and met Iris is an example of history. In
discourse, on the other hand, reference to a speaker is included: I said Charles
went to the movies is discourse. The effect of history, it is claimed, is transpar-
ency. Such narration is said to impart an impression that it is authorless, that it is
an instance of events or reality appearing, deceptively by all accounts, to narrate
themselves. Realist representation is supposed to exemplify the historic mode of
narration. You might think that this account only applies to temporal representa-
tions, like novels and feature-length movies, but it is also extended to static
pictorial representations including portrait^.^ Why is this transparency effect
ideological? Because the lack of reference to a speaker is assimilated to the
suppression of acknowledgement of the representational apparatus and the
situation of utterance (the production of the representation) which includes the
suppression ofreference to the interests that motivate the utterance..The historic
mode of narration is ideological because it imparts the impression that the
representation results from no interests whatsoever or that its production is
disinterested.
There are myriad problems with the standard accounts of transparency. Can it
really be the case that by adopting the historic mode of narration, spectators are
brought to the false belief that the representations set before them are none other
than events narrating themselves? What about the title pages of novels, pro-
gramme notes at theatre, signatures on paintings, copyright notices in photo-
graphic captions, credits sequences at the beginning and end of movies, and
brand names in advertisements? Furthermore, what would it take for a represen-
tation to have the effect of appearing as a n instance of an event narrating itself?Is
the idea even comprehensible? If a representation is intelligible, we irresistably
infer that some agency executed it. We cannot but attribute an author to it. If
8 Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Lingctisfics, Miami 1971, pp. 206-207.
9 See Craig Owens, Representation,Appropriation and Power, in Art in Anzericu, hlay
1982, p. 15.

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 Cotispiracy Theories of Represeritatiori 403

when reading a novel we were suddenly taken by the conviction that the events
that comprise the book were narrating themselves, we would be as dumbfounded
as we would be by the sight of the Pentagon levitating and turning orange as a
result of Yippie chanting. The notion of an intelligible narrative as mi gerteris
violates our sense of natural order. Nor do we have any idea of what it would take
for an intelligible novel to override this natural prejudice. Certainly omitting
references to an authorial I, especially afictional, authorial I, will not turn the
trick. Instilling the impression that a novel is authorless is, strictly speaking, just
impossible. Normal readers cannot be deluded into believing that novels are
authorless, nor do I understand what plausible interests the authors of novels
could have in convincing us that their work is authorless. hforeover, if the
post-structuralist accuses me of taking literally what is meant as a metaphor,
then I must point out that this metaphor is spoken of as if it described a state that
has certain effects whose sequence makes no sense if the appearance of author-
lessness is, in fact, only a metaphor.
Of course, it is also mistaken to believe that the corpus of classic realist
representation can be assimilated to the historic mode of narration. Are not
Goethes Yoicrig Wertlrer and the epistolary novel in general full of discoirrse
along with the movie Sirriset B k d . , Rembrandts self-portraits and Frank Per-
dues chicken advertisements? But certainly they are all also examples of clas-
sic, realist representation. Moreover, what is the connection between the lack of
reference to I and you in narration and the putative effect of authorlessness?
Surely narration can be discourse without the I contained in it referring to the
actual author of the work. And, furthermore, works of classic realism may indeed
contain references to the actual author and audieiice of a representation. Thack-
e n y refers to himselfjokingly in Variity Fair, Fielding acknowledges the reader
in Torn Jones, while many televised, used car ads include actual dealers ad-
dressing us (You cant beat this anywhere) unabashedly. The history/discourse
model just does not fit the phenomena that the post-structuralist seeks to
describe. Nor is it clear why discourse, the mere inclusion of first and second
person references, enjoins a reminder of the authors role, or why the lack of
such references causes the impression that the work is authorless. And more
mysterious still is the notion that somehow the inclusion or exclusion of first and
second person reference, or the pictorial equivalents thereof, would result
respectively in the awareness or unawareness of the motives and interests that
underlie a given representation.
To avoid the preceding objections, the transparency effect might be explicated
without reference to the purportedly linguistic distinction between history and
discourse. It might be said that realist representations mask the fact that they are
productions or constructions.1o Realist representations impart the impression of
transparency by effacing reference to the conditions of their production, thereby
appearing authorless and, consequently, without motive or ideological interests.
Taken literally, this scenario is false for the kinds of reasons already rehearsed.
10 Sometimes this is stated by saying that the realist representationeffaces the fact that it
is an enunciation. Like the historyldiscourse distinction, enunciation is also a term
drawn from continental linguistics. I have questioned the putative connection between
the linguistic accounts of enunciation and the larger applications post-structuralists
make of it in my Address to the Heathen, October, 23,1982, and in my Response to
Heath, Ocrober, 27, 1983. In practice. linguistic trappings aside, when post-
structuralistsspeak of the suppression of enunciation, they mean either the repression
of the acknowledgement of the spectators interpretive activity, or, more frequently,
the masking of the ideological interests that motivate the work.

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404 Noel Carroll

We are always aware that representations are the products of human agency; a
necessary condition for the cognitive assimilation of a representation is the
recognition that it is a human product.
But perhaps what is meant by the suppression ofthe fact ofproduction, in the
post-structuralist context, is not the effacement of the production history of the
representation but rather a denial of the spectators interpretive response at the
moment of his reception of the representation. That is, it is certain factors of the
production of meaning in the context of the communicative act that are the facts
of production that the post-structuralist believes the realist representation re-
presses. A communicative exchange requires an active, interpretive response
from the spectator. In order for a representation to be processed, the spectator
must do things such as comprehend conventions, supply presuppositions, and
engage in a range of interpretive acts. The realist representation, it is claimed,
encourages a spectator in the impression that this interpretive activity is not
occurring, and that the meaning of the work is self-sufficiently reflected in the
representation. The impression of transparency here is that the meaning of a
representation somehow is completely internal to the work, ready to yield itself
automatically.
That the audience is unaware of its interpretive activity is implausible. In our
own society, it is unfortunately a commonplace that everyone has his own
interpretation of everything, especially their own interpretations of representa-
tions. Contemporary Americans, with their exorbitant claims to unique and
personal views in every domain of life, err in a direction that is exactly opposite
than that of which post-structuralists accuse them. It is outlandish to claim that
ordinary consumers of representations are not aware that interpretation is
involved in responding to representations-they are the first to admit it, almost
nihilistically-while it is also apparent that everyone knows that a completed
communication requires a receiver. Nor is it easy to see what is involved in the
supposed impression that the meaning of a representation is self-sufficiently
contained in it. The notion is so obscure that until it can be rendered intelligible,
post-structuralists should refrain from attributing it to anyone.
Now in some cases, post-structuralists have very specific notions of what the
spectators productive response entails, e.g., the Lacanian interaction of the
spectators Imaginary and Symbolic. However, these accounts themselves are
so controversial, if not downright dubious, that it is not surprising that the
spectator, while experiencing representations, is unaware of these postulated,
anthropomorphic, inner goings-on. And anyway, the lack of awareness of the
operation of these processes would not be a special characteristic of realist
representation since unawareness of these processes is also supposedly occur-
ring even when we are not confronting realist representations.
Of course, the bottom line in the transparency account of realist representa-
tion is the claim that such representations impart the impression that they are not
ideologically motivated. They appear transparent, that is, in that they do not
appear ideologically coloured. Obviously the story about the way in which
realist representations appear authorless-i.e., author-transparent-is meant to
suggest a causal explanation of ideological transparency. If a work appears
uncoloured by an authorial viewpoint4.e.. appears authorless-then what
would an ideological viewpoint be attached to? I have dismissed the idea that a
realist representation appears authorless. However, even if this hypothesis is
discarded, it might still be the case that an effect of realist representations, qiia
their representational apparatus, is to promote the impression that they always
lack ideological motivations.

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 Cotispiracy Theories of Representntiori 405

Undoubtedly once we reject the causal hypothesis that in realist representa-

tion there is an jmpression of authorlessness which propones an aura of ideologi-
cal neutrahty, I t becomes hard to understand how and why simply by being a
realist representation, something could give the impression that it was bereft of
ideological affiliations. Are there not works of realist representation of unmis-
takable ideologicaI affiliation-West's Tlze Death of General Wore, Gros's
Napoleon at Arcole, Riefensthal's Triirnipli of the Will, Huxley's Brave New
world and so on. What would we say of someone who denied that these realist
representations appeared to lack an ideological viewpoint? I conjecture that
either such a person really does not understand what these works are about or
that, more likely, such a person embraces, before encountering these respective
representations, the ideological positionsfound in these works. That is, such a
person probably takes the ideological messages in question to be true rather than
ideologica14n the basis of antecedent beliefs-and he regards the works as
illustrations of what, for reasons external to the work, he was already predis-
posed to accept as an ideologically untainted fact. Certainly no one who antece-
dently rejects the ideological postions inscribed in the previous examples will be
prone to accept such representations as ideologically neutral. But if we want an
account of why some people believe ideologically skewed representations, we
would, I think, be better advised to attend to the antecedent beliefs such people
have than to some special power of realist representation. I am not denying that
representation plays a part in the educational process through which people
acquire beliefs. Rather I am suggesting that it will be the examination of concrete
cases of educational processes over time which will deliver accounts of why
certain ideological messages are not regarded as such by ordinary spectators.
That is, the history of the inculcation of certain beliefs instead of the investiga-
tion of the structure of representation-in terms of a quasi-formal effect like
transparency"-will be our best avenue of research.
In the preceding paragraph, the argument proceeded by means of examples
of representations whose ideological commitments were quite overt. But the
post-structuralist might claim that it is not those sorts of works that the transpar-
ency effect is meant to explicate. Rather, we should think of more quotidian and
covert examples such as T V police shows, horror films and advertisements.
First, I should say that I am not persuaded that every popular representation
conveys a message that is ideological, partly because it is unclear that every one
of them contains a message and partly because a suitably constrained concept of
ideology may not be applicable to all of those remaining representations which
can be said to have messages. Furthermore, I think it isjust false to suppose that
ordinary viewers are lulled by some transparency effect into believing that
advertisements are not motivated by interests which the viewer easily identi-
fies.I2 Nor do I think that viewers are automatically blinded to the ideological
11 It is ironic that while post-structuralists, of the politicized variety, derive their impetus
from anti-formalism, nevertheless in their accounts of representation they appear to
offer generic accounts, which are not very specific historically. of the invariant struc-
tures of realist representation. These analyses at least recall a species of formalist
functionalism.
12 Especially among American, politicized. post-structuralists, advertisements seem to
hold a particular fascination. In this regard, it may be interesting to note that this was a
generation steeped in Vance Packard's exposes of the ad industry. This fascination
with advertisements certainly must have contributed to this generation's appreciation
of Bathes. At the same time, it seems predictable to adopt a conspiracy view if
American advertisements are your paradigms of representation.

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406 Noel Carroll

function of the police shows and doctor's shows that reassure us that we are in
the care of public servants who are incredibly committed and tremendously
talented. If viewers fail to analyze these messages it may be attributable to a
combination of the sort of complacency engendered by being bombarded by a
surfeit of such messages and by the fact that viewers bracket such exercises
under the rubric of entertainment, acategory ofthings not to be taken seriously.
Psychological and sociological study of both the causes and effects of compla-
cency and of prevailing notions of entertainment seem better starting points for
investigation here than the examination of the structure of representation as
such-that is, if we want to study the ideological effectiveness of popular
culture.
Of course, it may be the case that many viewers do not recognize the ideologi-
cally skewed representations found in popular entertainments. But again this
may have less to do with some transparency effect than with the fact that viewers
already accept the ideology embodied in a work. For example, in current horror
films, like Halloween, sexually active women are often punished by gruesome
executions. If audiences fail to recognize the ideological significance of this, it is
probably because they accept these executions as morally appropriate. I am not
denying that a spectator may not acquire an ideological belief in the course of
viewing a popular entertainment. However, this appears to occur most often
when an ideological conviction is presented by a character whom the spectator
already admires or approves because of that character's non-ideological
virtues-strength, cunning, cool, beauty, courage, fortitude, wit, expertise,
honesty, knowledge, civility, etc. But this is not the effect of realist representa-
tion as such. It is a persuasive technique available to high school football coaches
and popular artists alike; and there is no reason to believe that this rhetorical
strategy must be placed in the service of ideology (or in the service of anything
else, for that matter) in every realist representation.
Like the notion of transparency, the notion of naturalization is employed in
diverse and confusing ways in the contemporary assault on representation. At
times, the idea of naturalization may be used synonymously with that of a
deceptive illusion of reality. To naturalize a depicted event is' to evoke the
illusion that the spectator is witnessing a real event, i.e., the referent of the
representation is experienced as actually confronting the spectator. This usage
of naturalization is susceptible to our earlier arguments against the illusion
effect. Likewise, naturalization is apt to be run together with the idea of the
transparency effect of authorlessness. Realist representations are said to impart
the deceptive impression that they are without authors and, thus, have the aura
of reality o r nature narrating itself. This concept of naturalization falls with the
inadequacy of the proposal that realist representations impart the illusion of
authorlessness. However, there are further applications of the notion of natu-
ralization that require attention in their own right.
Canvassing post-structuralist polemics, one finds quite a lot of things posing
as natural in the practices of realist representation. Antony Easthope, for exam-
ple, holds that iambic pentameter in poetry imparts the impression that it is the
natural poetic form of English, where that means the meter that is uniquely
determined by the cadences, the natural cadences, of spoken English.ls East-
hope challenges the validity of this belief by showing that other meters suit
English and by showing that the institutionalization of iambic pentameter was an
historical rather than a natural development. Easthope's criticisms of the natural
status of iambic pentameter seem acceptable. However what is peculiar is his
13 Antony Easthope, Poerry as Discorme, London 1983, p. 64.

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 Coiispirmy Theories of Rtpreseiitatiort 407

apparent belief that poems in iambic pentameter impart the conviction that they
exemplify some sort of natural language. Who, one wants to know, is over-
whelmed by such an unusual, not to say false, conviction? Ordinary readers? Do
ordinary readers finish poems suddenly deceived about the natural structure of
verse? True, theorists, such as George Saintsbury, have claimed that the choice
ofiambic pentameter was determined by the structure of English. But that was
a theory, not a poll or a summary of the effects of iambic pentameter on readers.
There is no apparent reason to suppose that iambic pentameter affects ordinary
readers in such a way that they come, mistakenly, to believe something like
Saintsburys theory, or for that matter, any other theory by, so to say, osmosis.
I have mentioned this example because it represents a frequent trope of
post-structuralist criticism. Often a form of classic realist representation is said
to have as an effect upon the spectator the imparting of an impression which, in
fact, is identical with a rival, theoretical, essentialist characterization of the
nature of the medium of representation in question. We are told that classic
realist cinema imparts an impression of reality-past, which observation is not
based on any information about how film affects spectators but is an attribution
of a belief in Bazins theory of the ontology of film to ordinary viewers: and we
are told that TV imparts the impression of reality-present, thereby characteriz-
ing ordinary spectators as untutored proponents of Marshal M c L ~ h a n . Repre-
~
sentational media, in short, are often portrayed as inflicting discredited theories
about themselves upon spectators. However, the post-structuralists supply no
evidence to support claims that viewers typically possess the arcane views of the
various media that said media supposedly cause in them. Perhaps the post-
structuralists are confusing theoretical polemics with sociology.
When a post-structuralist claims that a work of realist representation gives the
impression of being natural, one wants to ask Natural in contrast to what?.
Where authorlessness is the effect that the post-structuralist has in mind, I
would imagine that the contrast is supposed to be man made. However, if ever
that effect were achieved, I would be tempted to describe the representation as
siipertiatuml. An initially more probable foil to natural may appear to be
cultural. In this case the post-structuralist would be claiming that though
representations are cultural artifacts, they appear to be natural. But this seems to
me to be as absurd as the assertion that such objects appear to be authorless. For
it is a necessary condition for appropriately responding to representations that
they be recognized as the types of cultural productions they are: pictures rather
than states of affairs: fictions rather than events. Nor can representations be
nppreciclted if they are thought to be natural in the sense of being siri getreris.
The post-structuralist, it seems to me, is led to say that representations appear
natural rather than cultural because he tends to identify the cultural with the
conventional and the coded. Indeed, for him these notions are intersubsti-
tutable. If something is cultural then it is conventional and coded, and, more
obviously, vice-versa. Furthermore, if something is not recognized to be the
product of conventions, then it is not recognized to be cultural. It, instead,
appears natural-Le., not the product of historically formulated conventions, or,
as post-structuralists prefer to say, the product of historically formulated codes.
Moreover, the post-structuralist believes that all representations are the prod-
14 George Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody. 3 vols., London 1910.
15 These views about spectator responses to cinema and TV can be found in John Ellis,
VisibleFictions, London 1982. We also encountered this tendency to attribute theories
to audiences in our discussion of the way in which language supposedly induces assent
to the correspondence theory of truth.

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408 Noel Carroll

ucts of conventionslcodes. To the extent that they are not recognized as such,
they appear natural, i.e., their historico-cultural ongins in conventions and
codes are suppressed or masked. Perspective and narrative, putatively, are
conventions; they are not recognized as such. Rather, they give the impression
of being natural.
The preceding account, of course, depends upon conflating the cultural, the
conventional and the coded. I think that we should want to distinguish between
these things. Are not codes generally specific types of conventions, rather than
being co-extensive with conventions? However, the identification of the conven-
tional and the cultural is even more problematic. Is everything that is cultural
reducible to conventions?
The claw hammer is a cultural artifact; it was designed with a specific histor-
ical need in rnind-driving and/or extracting a certain type of nail with a flattened
head. That need only appeared in certain societies-to simplify, let us say
societies that had nails with flattened heads. These societies needed these nails,
in turn, to build certain types of culturally specific structures-again to simplify,
let us say to build houses. Houses, obviously, might be built without nails. So, to
a certain extent, we might say that the need for nails is society-specific. But does
that make the use of hammers a convention (or a code)?
No. Conventions-such as which side of the road to drive o n - a r e arbitrary.
That is, establishing a convention involves choosing between a range of equally
acceptable alternatives. Just because the alternatives are equally acceptable, we
can establish the convention by fiat. However, once one has the problem or the
desire to drive certain types of nails most effectively, solving that problem is not
arbitrary. One must attend to means-ends relationships and to the constraints
imposed by physics and human biology. The problem of driving and extracting
nails with flattened heads cannot be solved by fiat. We could not, for example,
decide to drive nails with butterfly nets. Thus, not every object that is a cultural
invention-that responds to a culturally evolved need-is the result of the
formulation of a convention.
What has this to do with representation? Well, the post-structuralist wants to
treat things like narrative as purely conventional, because it is obviously cul-
tural. But even though narrative is cultural, it is not clear that it is purely
conventional. This is not to say that there are no conventions involved in
narrative. But is narrative as such conventional? That is, given the aims of
narrative-among other things, to promote understanding-and the structure of
cognition along with human life as we know it, what practice would succeed as
well as narrative to make such things as human relationships intelligible?
Perhaps this example is too abstract to be profitable. Let us consider a more
localizable example. In film there is a practice of suggesting that two events are
simultaneous which involves cutting from one event to the other. This is called
parallel editing. Semiologists believe this is a code and have called it the 'alter-
nate syntagma'.16 But is it really a code/convention? Simultaneity could be
conveyed in other ways. We could show simultaneous events sequentially in
their entirety-with no cutting between t h e m - a n d tint one of them red and the
other blue in order to communicate their simultaneity. But given the structure of
human minds, the aim of mass movies to be comprehended quickly by untutored
audiences, and the frequent aim of such editing-to evoke suspense-would the
preceding alternative method to parallel editing be successful? I doubt it. The
viewer watching the first scene would not know what was going on simultane-
ously in the second scene, while if the second scene was very long the viewer
16 Christian Metz, Film Language, New York 1974, p. 128.

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 Conspirncy Theories of Represenintion 409

might forget about the first scene. But then the use of parallel editing does not
Seem to be conyentional. And if the semiotician wants to prove that it is, then the
burden is on him to produce an equally successful format for portraying simul-
taneity cinematically.
The post-structuralist identifies the cultural with the conventional. But there
are arange ofcultural forms and activities which are not simplyconventions. For
want of a better term, I will call these practices. They cannot be adopted by fiat
but are arrived at by means-ends reasoning and experimentation in order to find
the most effective method of solving a problem under the constraints of how the
world is and of how humans are built. Using hammers and parallel editing are
practices in this sense as, I would argue, are the uses of narrative and perspective
in the pursuit of certain ends. But if we say such things are practices, we short
circuit many post-structuralist arguments concerning naturalization, The failure
of the spectator to see parallel editing as a convention-thereby seeing it as not
cultural and, therefore, as natural-is not a failure at all, because parallel editing
is not a convention; it is a practice. And surely the spectator knows parallel
editing is a practice of movie exposition, which, in turn, is recognized as cultural.
similarly, readers do not fail to recognize that narratives are cultural-what else
would they be? Their supposed failure to recognize narrative as a convention,
again, may not be a failure and, therefore, cannot be taken as evidence that
readers apprehend narratives as natural. And, of course, even if narratives were
a convention, it is unclear how mistaking it to be a practice, as I do, would have
significant ideological repercussions.
The source ofthe idea that representation has a naturalizing effect is, I believe,
Roland Barthes. The idea of the naturalization effect occurs in his Myth Today,
and The Rhetoric of the Image, to mention two seminal essays. Barthess use
of natural is not always univocal. However, he does emphatically return to one
characterization of the naturalization effect that we have not yet reviewed. To
naturalize is to present what is cultural and historical--certain structures of
human relations, values, etc.-as if they were natural-facts of human
nature-and eternal. For example, the nuclear family, instead of being seen as an
historical development within Western Culture of a specific period, is presented
by the practices of realist representation as an eternal, natural form of human
existence. Albums, like the Faniily of Man, use the techniques of photographic
verisimilitude in a way that convinces us that our present conception of family
life is transcultural, i.e., natural. Barthes thinks that the denotative function of
photography imbues the cultural viewpoint inscribed in the image-what he calls
its connotation-with the aura of being a fact. Followers of Barthes extend this
style of analysis to all forms of realist representation and to what they might call
the codes of verisimilitude employed by said forms. All realist representation has
this naturalizing function which is to promote the impression that historically
evolved, cultural values, roles and relations are eternal verities. The naturaliza-
tion effect, so conceived, can have vast ideological significance, since through
realist representation the ruling class can proffer its values as irreversible facts of
nature.
Barthess account of the naturalization effect resembles, while not being the
same as, the Brechtian notion that realist theatricaI representation induces the
illusion that things cannot be otherwise. This is not surprising given the impor-
tance of Brecht for Barthes. However, this formulation of the naturalization
17 Roland Barthes, hlyth Today, in hfyrhologies, trans. A. Lavers, New York 1972;
Barthes, The Rhetoric of the Image, in Image-Music-Text, trans. S. Heath, New
York 1977.

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410 Noel Cnrroll

effect also shares many of the problems of the Brechtian account. Certainly we
can all think of cases where cultural prejudices have been naturalized in the sense
of being presented as eternal laws of human behaviour. That women are depen-
dent, that they want to be raped and dominated is a theme of Lina Wertmullers
Swept Away. The sense that this is an eternal truth is secured by the deserted
island device, a trope which since Robinson Criisoe, at least, has been used to
portray how people, supposedly, really are. The thinking behind this device is
crudely experimental; it assumes, in the face of Aristotle, that human nature as it
really is will only be revealed once people are removed from the network of
social relations, restricted in a lonely laboratory. A similar device for abstracting
human nature is the atomic war which destroys society leaving us to, well, live
naturally. See pulp novels like The Srand and Lucifers Hammer for examples of
this. But note that when we explain these naturalizing effects, we point to
rhetorical devices, strategies, and tropes to explain the way in which the effect is
achieved in agiven work. We do not point to the nature of representation as such.
Verisimilitude, in and of itself, does not suggest this variety of naturalization.
The evidence for this is that there are realist representations in each medium and
artform that d o not suggest they are depicting eternal verities while at the same
time they do not differ vis B vis their techniques of verisimilitude from works
within the same medium that do naturalize their themes. The characters as well
as the personal and social relations depicted in Renoirs Grattd Illiisioti and
Rrrles of rhe Game are not eternal types nor are they meant to be. The latter film,
for example, attempts to portray the modern hero. Nor is Musils Man Withoiit
Qiralities ahistorical. Thus, though it may be the case that some representations
do naturalize their content, it is not the case that all representation automatically
naturalizes, which is the claim post-structuralists presume to be axiomatic.
Perhaps the most informal use of natural among post-structuralists relies on
the idea that realist representations make their content appear familiar to us. We
accept realist representations because they familiarize whatever they touch;
they make it seem natural in the sense of not out of the ordinary. We are inured
to whatever the representation presents because we are so accustomed and
comfortable with representations. Suppose, to take a famous example of
Barthes, we look at a photo of a black colonial soldier saluting a French flag.
What might be meant by saying that this image appears natural to us is that its
bizarre juxtaposition of elements does not jolt us. You might think we should be
astounded by such an image, as you might think we should be left open-mouthed
and gaping by most of the advertisements we see on TV and billboards. But we
are not. They seem ordinary, commonplace. We do not bother to decipher their
ideological messages and presuppositions. We assimilate them like so much
environmental noise. We do not dwell upon their utter peculiarity and grotes-
querie, nor on their fantastic implications. They are too familiar. We accept them
as natural just because they are so familiar. How can this happen? The post-
structuralist answers: because representation naturalizes.
But this suggestion does not seem quite right. Often we are jolted by what we
see in realist representations and we are appalled by their implications. I was
numb with shock and scandalized when I saw the family film Red Dawn. Nor
does it take an acquaintance with post-structuralism for the scales to drop from
ones eyes on such an occasion. I remember my Irish grandmothers violent
reaction to John Fords The Quiet Mati; she knew what it was saying about her
people and she disapproved vociferously. Realist representation does not guar-
antee that its presuppositions will be swallowed as perfectly and acceptably
commonplace.

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 Conspiracy Theories of Represeittniiori 41 1

And yet it is true that we are accosted an every side by representations whose
strangeness and whose outrageous ideological commitments we accommodate
in our stride. IS this to be explained in terms of realist representation? One
consideration against this is that many of the advertisements that surround us are
not, strictly speaking, realistic representations in so far as they are photornon-
tages of virtually Cubist spatiality. But we are as undisturbed by them as we are
by the photographic advertisements staged in perspectively organized space.
Perhaps what we are really talking about is complacency. We happen to be
complacent about that with which we are familiar. This does not apply only to
realist representations, but to the majority of the details of everyday life. And if
we feel the compulsion to find an explanation for this, then the answer probably
lies not in considerations of the structure of realist representation, but in the
consideration of the cultural conditioning and social factors that determine our
complacency in regard to whatever we are complacent about.
Nor, by the way, does the familiarity account of naturalization segue neatly
with other commitments of post-structuralists. We become familiar supposedly
with what becomes conventional. Realist representation is purportedly conven-
tional, at least in the sense that it is the most frequent form of artistic and mass
media communication. Its special effect is said to be naturalization. But if this is
a result of being conventional, in the preceding sense, then realist representation
can have no special effect. Consider the techniques of visual verisimilitude. We
now accept realist portraits as natural, purportedly as a result of their use of what
post-structuralists would call the code of similarity. Yet, if we adopted another
set of conventions, one in which portraits were composed in the vocabulary of
what was indiscernible from Pollock drip-paintings, and if these conventions
became dominant, then they would, according to the familiarity theory, appear
natural. Thus, realist representation is not explained in terms of a special
naturalization effect, because it is the dominance of a convention, not the
structures of a practice, which causes the naturalization effect. Barthes. for
example, believes that photography has a special potential for naturalization
because it is mechanical. I do not wish to criticize this view of photography
now.18 I only wish to point out that such an explanation of the naturalization
effect of photography is cancelled out if we explicate naturalization in terms of
dominant conventions. For then the structure of the representational system
makes no difference; only the pervasiveness of the practice of representation
does. And the post-structuralists believe that that could always be otherwise.
I have reviewed what I find to be the most significant theoretical consid-
erations underlying the conspiracy view of representation that is coming to
dominate academic art theory and criticism today. I have argued that the current
foundations of the conspiracy view appear dubious. There may be arguments of
which I am unaware. But, provisionally, I see little prospect in the conspiracy
approach to representation. I would like to conclude by offering a brief diagnosis
of what I believe is the route by which so many people have been led into an
ill-advised enterprise.
At the heart of the conspiracy approach is an opposition if not a distrust of
realist representation. This is cast in political terminology by conspiracy
theorists. As well, I suggested that the conspiracy approach to representation
was embraced in this country in the wake of the late sixties. What was there in
the late sixties that might shed light on the distrust of realist representation?
Well, Modernism.
18 This approach to photography is criticized in my 'Concerning Photographic and
Cinematic Representation', forthcoming in the journal Dialectics and Hitmanism.

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 The advanced art of post-World War I1 America was stridently competitive
with realist representation-in painting obviously, but also in theatre, poetry,
the novel, dance, film and so on. The post-structuralists of today were often the
Modernist accolytes of yesterday, and they frequently attach their theory to the
support of the contemporary artistic tendency called Post Modernism. What has
been preserved of the Modernist polemic is its deep hostility to representation.
Of course, contemporary post-structuralists and Post-Modernists politicize the
Modernist line in a left-leaning direction; for some, this is the reason they call
themselves Post-Moderni~ts.~~ But the denunciations of realist representation
remain fundamentally the same. It is true that Modernists decried representation
for the sake of baring the true nature of their artistic media, whereas post-
structuralists and Post-Modernists speak of baring the semiological operation of
media. But the enduring conflict with representation continues. The grip of
Modernism appears unrelenting. Post-structuralists and Post-Modernists have
basically adopted the aesthetic posture of their Modernist predecessors and
mentors, dressed it up in semiology, and called it politics.
19 The view that true Fbst-hlodernism is political is voiced by Hal Foster in his introduc-
tion to H. Foster (ed.), The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post Modern Cultrtre, Port
Towneshend, Wash. 1983.

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