Exhibits’ meticulous detail generated certainty of correspondence to reality

Evidence

At first sight, the distinction between representation and ‘external reality’ seemed very clearly determined. There are three features of the world exhibitions I will mention in order to illustrate how this distinction was set up: the apparent realism of the exhibits, their organisation around a common centre, and the position of the visitor as the occupant of this central point. First, it was remarkable how perfectly the exhibitions seemed to model an external world. As the Egyptian visitor noticed, on the buildings representing a Cairo street even the paint was made dirty. It was precisely this kind of accuracy of detail that created the certainty, the effect of a determined correspondence between model and reality. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 66 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Despite these methods of creating the determined distinction between representation and reality, however, it was not always easy in Paris to tell where the exhibition ended and the world itself began. It is true that the boundaries of the exhibition were clearly marked, with high perimeter walls and monumental gates. But, as the Egyptian delegation had begun to discover, there was much about the real world outside, in the streets of Paris and beyond, that resembled the world exhibition; just as there was more about the exhibition that resembled the world outside. It was as though, as we will see, despite the determined efforts within the exhibition to construct perfect representations of the real world outside, the real world beyond the gates turned out to be rather like an extension of the exhibition. This extended exhibition would continue to present itself as a series of mere representations, representing a reality outside. Thus we should think of it as not so much an exhibition as a kind of labyrinth, the labyrinth which includes in itself its own exits. But then, perhaps the sequence of exhibitions became so accurate and so extensive, no one ever realised that the ‘real world’ they promised was not there. Except perhaps the Egyptians. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 73 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The remarkable realism of such displays made a strange civilisation into an object the visitor could almost touch. Yet to the observing eye, surrounded by the display but distinguished from it by the status of visitor, it remained a mere representation, the picture of some strange reality. Thus there were, in fact, two parallel pairs of distinctions, between the visitor and the exhibit, and between the exhibit and what it expressed. The representation was set apart from the real political reality it claimed to portray as the observing mind was set apart from what it observed. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 72 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: World exhibitions constituted a total machinery of representation standing for larger truths; The strange power of exhibitions came from their claim to an external real; World exhibitions engineered realism through painstaking detail to guarantee a perfect model-reality correspondence — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 66 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• World exhibitions engineered realism through painstaking detail to guarantee a perfect model-reality correspondence #corroborates (0.97) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 66
• The realism of colonial displays doubled the distance between observer and observed #complicates (0.78) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 72
• The world exhibition’s logic colonized reality itself, collapsing the boundary between representation and world #complicates (0.78) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 73
• The world-as-exhibition framework makes reality itself a series of representations #complicates (0.76) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 118
• The real world came to resemble an extension of the exhibition #complicates (0.75)
• Exhibitions imposed colonial order by making meaning appear to float free of physical reality #complicates (0.73) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 35