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Representation and Social Reality

The distinction between what happens and the representation we construct of it takes on a particular dimension when representations are shared by many people. Imagine a very simple situation: several people are waiting in front of a door and we say that they form a queue. We can observe where each person is standing, how they move forward when the person ahead of them advances, or how someone protests when another person takes a particular place, but “the queue” already introduces a way of organizing what happens. With it appear a first and a last person, a turn that must be respected, and the possibility that someone may “jump the queue.” None of this makes the queue unreal. The representation happens and, by being shared, intervenes in the behavior of those participating in the situation.

Much of our social life has a similar structure, although considerably more complex. A piece of paper can be recognized as money, a piece of land can belong to someone, a line can separate two countries, and certain words spoken under established conditions can constitute a contract or a sentence. These representations are learned, shared, transmitted, and sustained through customs, documents, laws, and institutions, and precisely for this reason they can organize our behavior very effectively and produce consequences in what happens. If someone crosses a border without authorization, they may be detained; if a person fails to pay a debt, they may lose their home; and if a court passes a sentence, someone may be deprived of their freedom. The consequences happen, even though “border,” “debt,” “property,” or “sentence” form part of the systems of representation through which a society organizes and interprets those events.

The question begins to acquire a different significance when these representations become transparent. From a very early age, we learn what it means to own something, obey a rule, belong to a country, win or lose, have authority, or compete, and over time we cease to notice much of the learning that made these distinctions possible. We no longer need consciously to reconstruct the system each time we use money, respect property, or recognize authority. The representation operates so fluently that what we encounter as organized through it may present itself as an evident feature of social reality itself. What has been learned and historically constructed may thus take on the appearance of something simply given.

This allows us to consider concepts such as “power,” “competition,” “property,” “prestige,” or “nation” from another perspective. In certain situations, someone gives an order and another person obeys it, someone has certain resources at their disposal, someone prevents an action, or people compete to attain a particular position. All of this happens. The concepts through which we relate and organize these events may, however, become so transparent that we end up experiencing what they designate as though it necessarily existed in that way, independently of the forms through which we have learned to organize our common life.

Moreover, social representations do not merely organize our interpretation of what happens. By intervening in our actions, they also participate in what will happen afterward. If I consider someone hostile, I may treat them with distrust; their defensive response may then reinforce my conviction that they are indeed hostile. Something similar can occur on a collective scale. A shared representation guides behaviors, norms, and institutions; these produce consequences, and those consequences may subsequently appear as confirmation of the representation that helped to produce them. The map thus intervenes in what happens, and what happens may, in turn, reinforce the map.

Noticing this process while it is operating introduces a particularly relevant possibility. What until then appeared necessary may begin to reveal itself as contingent. This does not mean that an institution, a rule, or a social category is false, arbitrary, or dispensable simply because we have constructed it. A queue may still be a useful way of establishing an order, a society may need rules and institutions, and we may consider some forms of organization more appropriate than others. But recognizing their representational character allows us to notice that what we have constructed in a particular way could, at least in principle, have been constructed differently and can therefore be examined, discussed, or modified.

This difference has consequences for dialogue. As long as a particular organization of social experience presents itself as something given by the very nature of things, questioning it may seem absurd, mistaken, or even unacceptable. When two people or groups organize the same events through different representations and each of those representations has become transparent, both may experience themselves as simply defending “how things are.” A disagreement between representations can then become a conflict about reality itself, since each side may find it difficult to recognize as a representation what it experiences as self-evident. When we notice our own participation in that construction, the possibility opens of asking why we organize what happens in that way, what consequences it produces, what criteria sustain our interpretation, and whether other ways of doing so are possible. Recognizing a representation as a representation neither determines the answer nor requires us to abandon it, but it allows what seemed to lie beyond discussion to enter into it.

From this perspective, we can return to the question that runs throughout this essay. Can forgetting the representational character of our thoughts lie at the origin of a significant part of human conflict? Two people or groups may have incompatible interests, pursue different goals, or confront one another over very concrete events and consequences, but conflict takes on another dimension when the representations through which each side organizes what is happening cease to be recognized as such. They are no longer confronting only different interests, decisions, or criteria; each side may cease to experience itself as defending a particular interpretation of what happens and begin to experience itself as defending reality itself against someone who, from its perspective, appears to deny it. Noticing the representation while it is operating does not necessarily eliminate disagreement or resolve conflict, but it can profoundly alter the position from which we relate to it, making it possible for what appeared to be an unquestionable reality to return to the realm of what can be examined, discussed, and, eventually, transformed.

Perhaps an important part of the difficulty involved in transforming certain forms of coexistence lies precisely here. Shared representations can be transmitted over generations, incorporated into laws, buildings, documents, habits, and institutions, and produce events that seem to confirm their necessity. The more deeply they participate in our experience, the more difficult it may become to recognize them as representations, and the more easily what we have historically constructed may present itself as an inevitable condition of reality.

The question then returns to the central point of this essay. When we speak of property, power, competition, success, nation, or any other category through which we organize our common life, can we recognize what happens and at the same time notice the representation through which we relate and interpret it? Knowing that societies construct representations is still another map. Noticing them while they are operating may allow us to recognize that some things that seemed necessarily to be a certain way are also the result of how we have learned to represent and organize them. And perhaps it is precisely there that the possibility appears of asking ourselves again, together, whether we want to continue doing so in the same way.