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Representational Revolution

 the backcloth to an argument

'Image making is often considered one

of the unique and quintessential competences

of Homo sapiens sapiens, differentiating

the subspecies, for example, from H. sapiens

neanderthalenis and from earlier hominds.'

 From Whitney Davis' paper 'The Origins of Image Making'

The nineteenth-century is characterised by an energy for, and an enthusiasm about, the representational which outstripped anything before, or indeed since, in its general range and basic inventiveness.  During a handful of decades the representational was, to an unprecedented degree, mechanised, democratised, popularised, and humanised.  For instance, the mechanisation of the representational is most readily pegged out between markers such as the discovery of photography in the 1830's; the first recording of sound in 1877; the invention of wireless and cinematography in the 1890's.^[i] 

Between these inventive extremes there occurred dramatic improvements in printing, telegraphy, and so on^.[ii]  Additionally there were introduced aids to writing from simple ones such as carbon paper, sold commercially by the 1820's, to more complex ones such as the typewriter - in regular production by the 1870's.  The representational became increasing democratised through not only the introduction of mass formal education in the 1870s and the progressive extension of the franchise during the nineteenth-century plus the support provided by mechanic's institutes, band of hope meetings, itinerant lanternists, and, not least, by photography.  For photography, by the end of the nineteenth-century, had been simplified to a degree that it was assessable to  people in general.[iv]  A change epitomised by the Kodak slogan: "You press the button we do the rest."

The representational was humanised though people's increasing awareness that representations are made by, for, and about people in general.  So, for instance, named human authors emerged more commonly to replace the mysterious authorial voice of a supernatural God. 

Additionally, it can be argued, people during the nineteenth-century became increasing puzzled by, and concerned with, the nature of representational practice as such - an interest indexed, for example, by the marked growth during the century in stage magic and home conjuring.  So, for example, London had a small theatre wholly devoted to the presentation of stage magic from May 1873 to 1933 under the dynasty of the Maskelyne family. [Fisher, 1987, pp. 102-17.] [Davenport and Salisse, 2001.] ^[iii] 

The representational was popularised by the more ready availability of books via the introduction cheap editions, fortnightly parts, and the expanding use of circulating libraries plus the growth of public  libraries.                                          

It is also relevant to note the way in which the leisure time was expanded and change.  Increasingly, the working classes had the time available to them to pursue the kinds of representationally based activities, and to have access to representational products, to a degree previously restricted to the well-to-do.  The representational also went commercially down market – as indexed by the rise of the comic postcard.  Additionally, the very character of childhood changed with the manufacture of an increased number, and range, of toys.

Thus, there occurred during the nineteenth-century what I propose to dub a "Representational Revolution" - a revolution which, in its character and significance, was as dramatic in its instrumental changes, and as wide ranging in its social consequences, as the now more readily recognised revolutions by which it was proceeded, namely: the Industrial Revolution of the 18thC. and the Investigatory, or Scientific, Revolution of the 17thC.  But, whilst the latter revolutions have now received explicit academic recognition, and consequent attendant study, in contrast the Representational Revolution has yet to be accorded analogous study and recognition.  Although, of course, for the Investigatory and Industrial Revolutions there was a similar delay between actual occurrence and academic recognition - with, for instance, the Industrial Revolution, not consciously identified until well into the nineteenth-century. 

The nineteenth-century's Representational Revolution remains, therefore, for the most part a hidden revolution and one which to be made visible, so to speak, requires making salient the term 'representation' as both a category and a concept - along with the issue of representation set within the context of 'practice' in general.  It is, therefore, to the use of the term 'representation' I next turn.

 Under construction