Invoking representational circumstances forces the realism question discourse theory evades

Evidence

The notable feature of this approach is Said’s desire to combine very familiar emphases in literary-critical ways of reading (‘style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances’) with a post modernist emphasis on ‘representations as representations’ One of those ways of reading presses us towards the problematic of realism and mimesis, the other in the direction of non-mimetic, discursive ‘trutheffects’ It would be unimaginably difficult, if not altogether pointless, I should have thought, to refer a representation to its ‘setting’ and ‘the historical and social circumstances’ of its production and dissemination without raising, in some fundamental way, the issues of its ‘fidelity’ and ‘correctness’. for, it is usually with reference to ‘historical and social circumstances’ that worthwhile distinctions between a representation and a misrepresentation are customarily made. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 761

Categorization

• QUESTION: Useful analytic lever for whether the ironic/strategic stance requires a realism ground to stay non-collapsing — if representation always reopens fidelity, then the ‘strategic’ essentialist cannot sit in pure discourse.
• XREF: connects to: Said’s method cannot simultaneously hold realist historical grounding and non-mimetic discourse theory — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 341; Extreme Foucauldian premises reduce theory to passive consumption of discourse — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 112; Representation metaphors suited to small assertions fail on large debatable ones (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Said’s method cannot simultaneously hold realist historical grounding and non-mimetic discourse theory #expands (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 341
• Realism debates shift from content fidelity to formal concepts of totality. #contradicts (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 744
• Extreme Foucauldian premises reduce theory to passive consumption of discourse #responds-to (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 112
• Representation metaphors suited to small assertions fail on large debatable ones #qualifies (0.72)