Centering the Symbolic in Models of Representation: Critical Reconceptualization

• In Event: Modes of Representation

Abstract

Women’s representation in formal political institutions has long been a central concern of gender and politics scholars. Within this literature, the concepts of descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation posed by Hannah Pitkin (1967) constitute a dominate framework for empirical analysis. At the same time, however, the proliferation of alternative concepts of representation—such as preferable descriptive (Dovi 2002), surrogate and gyroscopic (Mansbridge 1999, 2003), and claims-making (Saward 2006, 2010)—hints at the incapaciousness of Pitkin’s typology for the study of underrepresented groups. This paper investigates the reasons for this inadequacy and adopts an intersectional approach to develop a concept of representation that provides greater analytical and normative leverage for the critical study of representation.

I make this argument in three steps. First, I trace the conceptual development of representation extending from Pitkin’s model to contemporary theorizations in order to expose several fissures in the conventional model that emerge from the study of historically underrepresented groups. Second, I contend that the conventional model’s insufficiencies are rooted in Pitkin’s denial of the causal power of the symbolic and privileging of rational individualism. By adhering to the imperatives of liberalism and positivism, Pitkin effectively limits the ability of her model to recognize the system legitimizing politics played out on gendered and raced bodies. Hence, I build on recent feminist scholarship on symbolic representation from a discursive perspective (Lombardo and Meier 2014; Rai 2010) in the third step. Specifically, I differentiate symbolic representation as a discursive practice from the more standard meaning of symbolic representation as a feeling among constituents, and argue that discursive symbolic representation is causally related to each of formal, descriptive, substantive, and symbolic (as felt) representation. The discursive politics of representation are both contextual and diffuse, suggesting that the meaning of formal, descriptive, substantive, and felt symbolic representation is refracted through relations of power manifested in institutions that construct the field of potential significations.

This reconceptualization of the system of representation has important methodological and substantive consequences. A critical rethinking of representation from the symbolic centers intersecting boundaries of inclusion and exclusion and motivates a normative approach to its study, making visible the mechanisms of oppression embedded in systems of knowledge production and politics. In addition, my conceptualization makes a structural intervention into the tension between advocacy for group representation and the potential essentialism embedded in linking descriptive and substantive representation. By taking an intersectional approach to the study of representation that further understands the symbolic as foundational in relationship to the other forms of representation, “standing for” and “acting for” may be—independently of each other—disruptive of or conforming to the racialized and gendered norms of the institution. Thus, this paper introduces a concept of representation that analytically and normatively improves upon existing conceptual frameworks for research on representation in the context of white supremacist heteropatriarchy.

Author

• Michael FitzGerald, Rutgers University, New Brunswick