a prior, already established referent, imagined, for example, as a concept, a concrete phenomenon, a historical past. The work of representation means bringing the prior referent “to presence” within whatever symbolic medium one is using (speech, writing, film, etc.).
Hence, when testifying, the President took an oath to re-present the truth but instead made statements that misrepresented what really happened when he claimed that there was no sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. And he repeated that same stance to the public once news of an investigation into his testimony became public. Of all of the memorable televised moments brought to us in 1998, many will likely recall that January 26 news conference during which Clinton stood, finger pointed, hand hitting the podium as he ardently denied the rumors that were circulating. “I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I did not have sexual relations with that woman—Miss Lewinsky.” No ambiguity there, it would seem. His subsequent recanting of precisely that statement seemed to prove the GOP argument: The President’s initial representation of a historical past failed to match a prior reality and we had evidence of the disconnection.
But the attempt to pin down the fact of criminality and then the accompanying consequences remained as slippery as a wet bar of soap. The very arguments supporting impeachment equivocated when naming what was at issue, and incorporated reasons that addressed concerns other than the execution of a crime. Clinton’s punishment was necessary not only because he needed to pay for his actions but also because citizens needed to know that there are enforceable laws governing language practices. Impeachment proponents referenced a positivistic view of representation when they portrayed those laws as immutable and transcendent rather than as social constructions, and their concern about presidential misconduct was pitched as a moral concern about social order achieved through compliance with a representational code. All of which suggested that the real crime pertained to a realm well beyond the legal proceedings initiated by Paula Jones. At the February 1999 closed-door Senate Hearings on the Articles of Impeachment (subsequently published in the Congressional Record), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) explained that he was compelled to vote to convict Clinton because “the President would seek to win at any cost. If it meant lying to the American people. If it meant lying to his Cabinet. If it meant lying to a federal grand jury.” Conviction was necessary, he added, because “the road” the president “has traveled” was not straight but “twisted, tortured”—one that “forced the American people and their government to plod along—for what seems to many of us like an eternity.”3
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) voted guilty because “our President must be trustworthy—a truth teller whose life of principled leadership and integrity we can count upon.” Clinton “betrayed that trust” that must be believed “if we are to follow him. . . . His leadership has been betrayed because most Americans have come to the cynical conclusion that they must read between the lines of his statements and try to catch a glimmer of truth amidst the spin.”4
“The spin,” of course, is a code word for the rhetorical or that which stands in opposition to the disinterested, timeless, and transcendent. “The spin” is precisely the realm of the spurious and the fraudulent, inhabited by charlatans who claim to speak truly but instead use language to seduce and manipulate audiences to take up perspectives that go against their better judgment. The spin implicates representational styles that abuse power when they act to turn heads away from “hard” facts or “reason’s harsh light.” Accordingly, we should attempt to escape the spin of seduction and seek access to reason and truth by invoking discourses of realism. We should engage in the practice of representation that endeavors to separate the spin from the truth by deploying a style that connotes a purposeful ordering and presentation of signifiers meant to reflect a prior reality. We might call this kind of engagement Mimesis 101.
From this perspective, the abstract goal of “bringing truth to presence” will be achieved when rhetors insure that the signifier acts as a substitute for the reality that is not visible or no longer literally present, such as an abstract ideal (justice) or a historical event (a prior occasion of speech). The act of re-presentation appears to be accomplished when language users reference an invisible and yet discernible structural order that presumably exists to insure that the representational form journeys to where it should—out of the spin zone and back to truth’s domain. To follow a (straight) path to the real and authentic, language users should endeavor to correlate the originary referent with the signifier that would re-present it by crafting a proper correspondence. The straightforward and honest speaker is the one who clearly charts clear correspondences and chooses words that do not impede the audience’s perception of what a signifier represents.
This version of discursive responsibility implicates not only how to use language but also how to receive it. Audiences are expected to “take a hard look” at the represented object to determine if the words being used are in alignment with the source material. Such discernment involves acts of recognition characterized as re-cognition—a cognitive act that involves taking a careful look at an object of representation to see if the essence of truth has appeared along with the signifiers that represent a given premise. Once speakers create a proper correspondence between words and referents, then the aesthetic and rhetorical dimensions of language use fall away, dislodged by the weight of what is indispensably valid.
Visual metaphors underwrite this conceptual model. By directing audiences to search for truth’s nugget and to decry its absence, this interpretive methodology also promotes a hierarchy of values wherein a representation’s form is regarded as subservient to content and therefore not as significant as the referent that precedes it. (See Panagia 7). Audiences are on call to look past the surface style, especially when it is deceptively seductive, so as to assess whether the rhetor has engaged the right procedures and endeavored to establish discernible resemblances between signs and referents. Credibility is ascribed to speakers who seem to follow governing procedures while those who do not may be deemed reckless and negligent. The value system encoded within this apparatus seems to neutrally authorize the dismissal of those who do not engage representational properties as they should.
Such was the logic organizing the campaign to unseat the President, whose speech acts were maligned because they gave no evidence of even attempting to conjoin words with referents. The GOP stance conveyed all of the suspicions of representation expressed by Plato as House and Senate members sounded an alarm about the dangers of figural excess that presumably will be eliminated when all emulate correct representational practices. Clinton’s apparent indifference to a governing representational order needed to be curtailed because its threat implicated more than his ways with words. The public’s apparent indifference to his crimes was read as emblematic of a national crisis involving a general disregard both for procedural fealty and for having simple faith in truth’s omnipresence.
“What has been happening, not just here in Washington, but all around the country is something far more disturbing than the trial of a President,” stated Sen. Frank Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) at that Senate closed-door session that would determine if the nation’s choice for president would be upended. “What we have been witnessing is a contest for the very moral soul of the United States of America—and that the great casualty so far of the national scandal is the notion of Truth. Truth has been shown to us as an elastic commodity.” In another context, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) expressed the same concern. “There are some who seem to be saying that truth doesn’t matter.” When voting to impeach Clinton, Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) described the issue as being not about “the relation that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky, but rather the credibility and the honor under oath that must exist within the institution of the presidency, and which has been squandered by the current occupant of this high office. There are absolute applicable standards by which we all must live. If we do not live up to those standards, we will no longer be that nation which stands as a beacon of hope for all the world.”5
It should be noted that a realist conception of representation is not party affiliated. The idea that modes of expression should deliver truth and reality in a straight way is one of those commonplaces that structure basic conceptions
