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September 30, 2005
Representation of the World
It is impossible to treat representation as something that is cut and dry. Categorizing it as either mimesis or social construction is not completely accurate because all representation is a mixture of the two. This can be seen in the case of language...language is composed of some words that arbitrarily represent a physical object, the social contructionist approach, and other words that attempt to imitate the world exactly how it is, onomatopeioas being an example.
However, one approach does dominate over the other, and this is the social contructionist approach. Most representations in this world are social constructions, and we are only able to make full sense out of them because we have equipped in our minds the knowledge needed to interpret these images.
It seems surprising to think that every image we see we are only able to understand because our minds process it. One would imagine this to be an exhausting and time consuming process, however, it is done without our knowledge. So at first thought, one might approach this question feeling sure that our world is represented solely through mimesis, since we do not spend half of our waking time interpreting images. When really thought about however, it is more reasonable to say that the world is predominantly represented through social construction, but we are so used to this kind of representation that it takes on the feel of mimesis.
Posted by lcissullivan at September 30, 2005 04:12 PM
Comments
Very thoughtful, Brenna and well articulated!
Posted by: ellen at September 30, 2005 06:41 PM
Good job Brenna! You really did a good job of explaining both of them individually then combining the two. After reading this I have a better understanding of what I wrote..
Posted by: Lauren Searls at October 1, 2005 03:06 PM