REPRESENTATION AND SELF-REPRESENTATION IN THE OCCUPATION OF THE NETWORKS, STREETS AND DISCOURSES

Abstract

The article is dedicated to examining the link between two movements challenging representation, identified in the fields of politics and literature. I am referring here to the questioning of representative democracy that was part of the series of protests between 2010-2013 and the discussion about the legitimacy of artistic productions to represent members of diverse minorities. These upheavals in representation will be analyzed above all as pressures for changes in the so-called distribution of the sensible (Rancière). In seeking to trace correspondences between these two movements of contestation, I will highlight their links with impactful technological and discursive changes, such as the development of network communication, the expansion of the discourse of testimony, and its forms of subjectivation. Finally, I will discuss the risk of this demand for change in the distribution of the sensible resulting not in the concrete expansion of democracy in the realms of politics and literature, but in the creation of digital and cultural bubbles characterized by homogeneity and intransigence.