5—
Representative Culture and Cultural Representation

Johannes Weiss

I

The ideas I present here arise from a lengthier investigation into the sociology of representation. For this reason they are somewhat tersely formulated and in any case represent provisional working hypotheses. I have two aims: to take a fresh analytical look at a part of the social landscape that has been undeservedly neglected by sociology, for all its fundamental importance of well-nigh universal presence,^[1] and to demonstrate, or at least test, the empirical utility of the concept of representation in several different areas.^[2]

In what follows I address the role of representation in the realm of culture. That I have singled out here an important aspect of "culture" is not as obvious as in the case of law or religion, to say nothing of politics. Nonetheless, my investigations to date have only served to convince me that this cluster of concerns is of the greatest sociological relevance. As Abbé Sieyès, the theorist of representative democracy and the father of the representative constitution of 1791, states: "In every walk of social life everything is founded on representation. It is met with everywhere in both the private and the public orders; it is as much the mother of the manufacturing and trading industries as of advances in the liberal arts and in statecraft; it would not be too much to say that it is integrally bound up with the essence of social life."^[3]

The concept of representation (at least in the sense I am using it) has

not yet been used systematically in the sociological theory of culture. The reason (apart from the general neglect of this concept in sociology) may be connected with the fact that the notion of cultural representation, even more than the idea of a representative culture, flies in the face of certain fundamental intellectual preconceptions of sociology, for the most part unconsciously held.

I may be treading on thin ice—for my comments may be criticized for taking a point of view supposedly downright unsociological—but at least I shall be doing so with open eyes. To make matters worse, I shall begin with an author, who, for all his distinction in his own subject and fame with the educated public at large, has not exactly set sparks flying or won any disciples in sociology itself. I am referring to Jacob Burckhardt; not so much the Jacob Burckhardt of the investigations into cultural history, but rather the one of the Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. Clearly the only practical justification for proceeding in this fashion must be the extent to which it helps to disengage the sociological imagination from any possible tendencies to parthenogenetic torpor!

Before getting into our subject, though, I must first say a few words on what I mean by representation and representative. The word representative has three principal meanings in the English language:^[4]

1. an agent or spokesperson who acts on behalf of somebody else,

2. a person who symbolizes the identity or qualities of a class of persons, and

3. a person who shares some of the characteristics of a class of persons.

I restrict myself to the first two meanings. In German these meanings have come to be denoted by different words: in the first case, when we mean an agent or spokesperson acting on behalf of somebody else, we use the expression Stellvertretung; in the second case, we use the expression Repräsentation. I point this out because I envision a certain relationship between these two distinct things; in particular, there exists a historical sequence between representation in the sense of Stellvertretung and representation in the sense of Repräsentation. For this reason, the title of my paper could doubtless be more adequately rendered in German, "Repräsentative Kultur und kulturelle Stellvertretung" or even "Von der repräsentativen Kultur zur kulturellen Stellvertretung." These titles would hopefully have a certain provocative effect to the extent that they exclude some other title such as "Von der repräsentativen zur authentischen Kultur."

II

One of the chapters of Burckhardt's Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen is headed "The Individual and the Universal (Historical Greatness)." It is not necessary here to spend much time on the general intellectual background against which Burckhardt's reflections were elaborated, which would mean, among other things, going into their ambivalent relationship to Hegel's philosophy of history (cf. Löwith 1984: 9) or assigning their place in the development of his thought as a whole.

According to Burckhardt, "uniqueness" and "irreplaceability" are the qualities normally associated with the idea of the "great individual." He writes, "He alone can be considered unique and irreplaceable who possesses an abnormal degree of intellectual and moral force, whose energies are focused on a universal goal, i.e., one that concerns whole peoples or whole cultures, even mankind in its entirety" (1982: 379). Greatness in Burckhardt's sense is also found when modalities of experience, judgment, and action that concern at once the whole of society and society as a whole culminate in certain individuals and indeed only in certain individuals, so that they alone are in a position to transform these modalities (380). The key and, one might say, dialectical point is that those universal goals that are most binding and paradigmatic—the very ones involving the modalities of experience, judgment, and action that are valid for whole societies or even for the whole of humanity—can only be brought into existence, receive fitting embodiment, and be transformed at the hands of outstanding individuals. It is by virtue of this idea that such individuals are designated representatives of the universal, in a double sense.

First, they embody and give expression to the universal in their work and person and do it in a characteristically well-rounded and impressive fashion. By doing so—and here we encounter the second sense of representation—they open for the rest of humanity opportunities to gain experience or to act that otherwise simply would not exist. Burckhardt notes that, particularly because of the great "writers and artists," people are able to "multiply their inmost being and powers" (383). Individuals endowed with exceptional creative gifts engage in activities that the rest of humankind can draw on to achieve a significant extension of their own existential possibilities. By the same token, humankind will not be able to evade the consequences of these widened possibilities. Great individuals are irreplaceable because they alone are able to

discharge certain necessary or, at any rate, important functions for all the others, that is, they act as their representatives.

Depending on just how improbable fundamental innovations are in the different cultural areas, the need for great representatives will vary. In any event, for Burckhardt it is an incontestable fact that "art, poetry and philosophy and indeed all the great achievements of the human spirit are sustained by their great representatives and that if there ever does come about a general raising of standards it is solely due to these few" (380). He points out that among many peoples of the world artists and poets were revered as virtual gods because they "are able to exteriorise what is internal and express it in such a way that as an expression of what is internal it has the force of a revelation" (383). For this reason, past ages have considered their poets to be the "mouthpiece" for their "deepest longings and awareness" (384).

A comparable importance does not attach to those whom he refers to as the "mere inventors and discoverers in professional disciplines." That is because their achievements would usually have been duplicated sooner or later by others and because such achievements do not attain the highest degree of universality, whose goal is the "world in its entirety." The great exception for Burckhardt is Christopher Columbus. Though it is correct to regard Columbus as replaceable, nonetheless his discovery—which was so fraught with consequences—has come to be tied once and for all to his person and to the quite exceptional energy with which he went about his purpose. Burckhardt notes, "The proof of the global nature of the earth is a precondition for all later thought; and to the extent that all later thought has been liberated by this preconception, so it reflects back inevitably upon Columbus" (381).

A similar achievement of momentous importance and universal validity in terms of later consequences is the attachment of the basic laws of nature to the natural sciences. Burckhardt writes, "All subsequent thought owes its liberation to Copernicus' expulsion of the earth from the centre of the world to the minor orbit in one particular solar system" (382). But for Burckhardt the cultural import of the historical sciences (in the widest sense) and their representatives is, by contrast, restricted and likely to remain so for the time being because they have not come up with any comparable discoveries.

One particular group of the great representatives, the actual group of historical individuals in the narrow sense, is made up of the founding figures and renewers in the world religions, the protagonists of religious, political, and social movements and revolutions and then, too,

the founders of state. The fact that some of them assume an ideal or at least idealized form and, indeed, may even be no more than mythical figures is for Burckhardt the strongest proof of the need for great representatives on the part of peoples. Through them the idées directrices of the religious or political spheres and movements, with their claim to universal validity and their ability to confer unity, are defined, actualized, and authenticated in a quite singular way, not in the least bit a symbolical remove but in fact perfectly concrete. "They subsume states, religions, cultures and crisis" (392). Their individual will stands for a volonté générale, which, depending on the exact circumstances, can be interpreted "as the will of God, as the will of a nation or collectivity, or as the will of the age" (401).

This summary should be enough to make Burckhardt's views on great individuals clear. One of the irritating aspects of his thinking on the matter is his almost pedantic insistence on demarcating the "great representatives" of the highest rank from those to whom he is only willing to attribute "relative greatness" (382) or who—especially in art—only count as "masters" of the second or third degree (384). This extreme fixation on "genuine" or "real" greatness may even make us suspect ideological motives behind these reflections as a whole. However, it would be wrong to dismiss even Burckhardt's extremely controversial closing remarks on the impossibility of great individuals emerging from the context of contemporary culture. Burckhardt saw the present as characterized by a "universal guarantee of mediocrity," an "antipathy against achievements of genius," and an all-consuming interest in the "exploitability of the given" (404). Such tendencies and, above all, the "prevailing passion of our day, the desire of the masses for a better life" were incapable of being "concentrated into one genuinely great figure."

III

I would not dare to suggest that the excerpts just presented from Burckhardt's Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen constitute a sociological analysis. In fact it would be much more plausible—and certainly more in line with Burckhardt's intentions—to perceive in these reflections not merely a definitely antisocial undercurrent of feeling but also an antisociological one. Nonetheless, these reflections on the role of great representatives point to a problem that sociology, and

particularly the sociological theory of culture, will avoid at its own peril. After all, it often happens that exciting developments in sociology crystallize around problematical phenomena that are allegedly external to, or even set over, society.

Thus it seems both appropriate and necessary that sociology should take Burckhardt's theme and treat it in line with its own specific modalities. Perhaps the following statement will command at least provisional assent: It is not only the production and transformation but also the maintenance and provision of the "objective culture" of a society that is in need of both institutional or material "symbolization" and the concrete representation by individuals of the complex of interpretations and evaluations that lay claim to objective validity and binding force. Of course the representation by individuals also has a symbolic dimension related to the function of giving expression or actualization. Still, the decisive difference is that an individual capable of action (a natural person) stands for and embodies central and fundamental cultural ideas and values, and, what is more, in so doing stands proxy or deputizes for the many others who do not have the necessary abilities but who are still integrally affected by the meaning and the practical consequences of these cultural ideals.

This is all the more true when what is involved is, not the preservation, further development, or paradigmatic depiction of value ascriptions, modes of living, and traditional interpretations of the world, but rather their invention and implementation in novel, possibly even revolutionary, forms—that is, we are dealing with processes in which fundamental cultural innovation takes place. Burckhardt, to be sure, also treats such processes for the most part. Perhaps understandably, sociology has clearly found it difficult to recognize and accept that outstanding individuals can play irreplaceable and decisive roles in such processes. In contrast to such a personalizing standpoint, the explanatory task of sociology—in the commonly expressed opinion, in any event—consists precisely in demonstrating the decisive importance of social structures and structural conflicts—at least in the final analysis—and the essential irrelevance or replaceability of such actors. In this fashion, sociologists hope to discharge the professional mandate of "explaining the social through the social." Yet one of our classical thinkers has not adhered to this opinio communis; instead he has propounded a theory of cultural innovation that assigns to exceptional individuals an integral and quite indispensable function. I am referring to Max Weber and his notion of charisma . Although this notion is so frequently cited in the

literature, it has usually been received with mixed feelings, and on only rare occasions has it been subjected to a systematic analysis. To what extent—even here—Burckhardt's direct influence on Weber may be assumed will be left open.^[5] It will suffice to remark that Weber treats the role and function of charismatic personalities only from the standpoint of leadership and rule and not from that of representative action (at least not in the sense used here).^[6] Therefore, his analyses are incapable of advancing us further into our particular enquiry and need not detain us.

Only one classical figure, though admittedly not one of the first importance, has turned up ideas that fit well with my theme. I am referring to Theodor Geiger and, in particular, to his book Aufgaben und Stellung der Intelligenz in der Gesellschaft, which was first published in 1949. Geiger begins his investigations by making a number of distinctions about the concept of culture. He takes what he terms the substantial concept of culture (he opposes it to the dynamic concept, which relates to culture in what he terms an intellectual social process ) and differentiates between representative culture and anonymous culture. What entitles both cases to be considered substantial is that culture here is conceived of as the "store of such cultural values as may have been acquired," which approximately corresponds to what Georg Simmel called objective culture . Geiger terms representative that branch of substantial culture in which the identity and the image that whole societies (or at least their ruling classes) and even whole ages form of themselves is expressed, manifested, and kept alive. In traditional societies the representative culture is primarily religious in form. For Geiger a profane representative culture first became a possibility in the Italian Renaissance.

I turn now to the cultural strata that function as the social carriers of representative culture. Geiger singles out two as being of decisive importance. The first is the Intelligenzija, not to be confused with the large and amorphous group of intellectuals, which constitutes the circle of what he calls "creators of resources of representative culture." It is in the nature of things that such individuals comprise only a "vanishingly small part of the population" (1987: 12). The second is the cultural stratum of the "educated"—likewise a small group—whose members possess an "immediate relationship" to the resources of representative culture. They are responsible for conferring a second meaning on this concept of representative culture; their immediate relationship to objective culture imposes on them the task of "representing culture inside society and society itself as a culture unit" (7).

In contemporary Western society, Geiger asserts, as a consequence of

the progressive "democratization of education," on the one hand, and the splitting off of education from utilitarian training, on the other, this stratum has been deprived of its functional justification and raison d'être. He states, "The educated caste of earlier times is losing its representative status" (9). The closely related question, whether this does not mean that the time of "representative culture" itself is also over, is not taken up by Geiger, and he certainly provides no answer to it. Similarly, the present and future situation of the Intelligenzija is left undiscussed. And the same applies to the question of why this cultural stratum does not play a representative role alongside (or as a consequence of) its creative one.

This loss of representative status in turn is intimately connected with the fact that Geiger does not address the double meaning of representation contained in the notion of "representative culture." This double meaning—allegedly contradictory in its very nature—resides in the fact that it is precisely the exceptional and outstanding individuals (or else a relatively small collection of such persons) who are responsible for creating and underwriting cultural contents possessing general validity and binding force. They are able to do so by virtue of the exceptional and nongeneralizable qualifications they bring to bear; so that what we find that is truly representative in a culture—that which concerns everybody as a whole—is in fact only able to be instigated and kept alive by the very few, who nonetheless function as representatives for all.

It may be objected to that for Geiger, the sociologist, the Burckhardtian problem loses much of its force—if indeed it is not revealed as a pseudoproblem—by virtue of the fact that in place of these exceptional, irreplaceable individuals he substituted a whole social group, the Intelligenzija . My impression, though, is that the problem is by no means laid to rest by its socialization here. Indeed other sociological theorists (and their dependents) of the Intelligenzija provenance were well aware that this was so. One very general definition stemming from Leszek Kolakowski (1969: 159) even has it that intellectuals are those "whose profession [it] is to create and to communicate cultural values." This definition, however, requires a coda, which runs as follows: this they do "in such a way as to typically claim that in so doing they are really acting in place of and on behalf of society, the people or at least the underprivileged class[es]." A qualification of this kind is needed to do justice to the intellectuals' own understanding of their social role along with the justifications they usually offer in defense of it, at least in modern Western society. Elsewhere (Weiss 1987) I have characterized the historical breed-

ing ground and the ultimate demise of this self-explanatory syndrome—namely the intellectual as cultural advocate of the oppressed masses—using a particularly important and instructive example, the Communist movement (from Marx to Sartre and Gramsci).

Such a claim to cultural representation on the part of the intellectuals has today lost virtually all of its former plausibility, especially even in the landscape of socialist parties and movements. E. P. Thompson (1987: 8) sharply attacked what he calls the "theory of substitution";^[7] similarly—indeed above all—there is Pierre Bourdieu, who has castigated the Marxian "demand for unconditional delegation" as a particularly objectionable form of "expropriation" of the people by those who dispose of the "cultural capital" (cf. Bourdieu 1975).

When intellectuals conceive of and justify themselves as representatives or delegates of the people in cultural matters, they naturally do not mean to imply that they have been formally appointed or elected. Rather, they derive their legitimation directly and expressly from an alleged capability to discern what is true and right (or even good), that is, they base it on cognitive or normative states of affairs in the broadest sense. The decline of the intellectuals (certainly in the West, but presumably in socialist states as well) is therefore closely bound with the declining plausibility of this very claim on their part to possess a universally valid, objectively based fund of knowledge to which the broad masses (so far) have no access. These modern Western intellectuals can only exist in a historical situation where the traditional representative culture is progressively losing its binding force, but the idea of a representative culture as such, that is, the idea of a universally valid cognitive and normative order (or Weltanschauung ), is not itself under attack. In point of fact, the representative role of such intellectuals can only be legitimized by the belief in the attainability of a new cultural order (which can also be the "good old," or natural, order); what is impossible is for legitimation to be purchased solely by an attack on the status quo, no matter how radical or devastating.

IV

Now I wish to define a little more rigorously a distinction already mentioned, the concept of representation by individuals. This concept has two possible meanings:

1. The realization and embodiment of universal ideas and ideals of a religious, aesthetic, and political kind, or even of suitably idealized communities. This actualization and embodiment is achieved by exceptional personalities. Hence, in this case, what is represented is itself an idea of a hypostatization but not a subject capable of acting.

2. The vicarious actions undertaken by individual, exceptional persons either for, on behalf of, or acting as proxy for the other members of the group in question or society (or even the whole human race). In this case, a person stands in for others, and so what is represented certainly is a subject capable of action.

Perhaps it would be more useful and appropriate to speak of symbolic or ritual representation in the first sense and of social representation in the second sense. In the concept of representative culture the different strands of meaning of representation are woven together. In this sense, Burckhardt too is talking about representative culture, although he does not actually use the term. For there can be no doubt that the function of the great representatives lies, not so much in social as in symbolic or ritual representation, that is, in the actualization and embodiment of ideas or ideal communities. To this extent they represent something that in principle also transcends the bounds of their exceptional personality and for this reason can lay claim to universal recognition and binding force.

At the same time, though, what emerges from Burckhardt's strong emphasis on the individuality of his great representatives is that he is really describing a state of incipient dissolution of representative culture (in terms of the transcendental nature of the meanings represented), or at least that these reflections indicate his own experience of a progressive dissolution of representative culture.^[8]

In the title of this chapter, I have attempted to express the difference between this situation, which even Burckhardt perceived as belonging to the past, and the present situation. Admittedly with a certain amount of license, even if only to emphasize the contrast more starkly, I draw on the conceptual duality of representative culture and cultural representation . I suspect that by drawing on this duality it is possible to designate the starting and (provisional) finishing point of a multistage development that is in reality very complex. This development consists then in the fact that the representative culture undergoes progressive disintegration and is replaced by a culture of representation. What is mainly

involved is a change in the type of relationship between the objective culture, or society, and its exceptional creators and bearers.

The starting point of this development is defined by the fact that the extraordinary cultural achievements of certain individuals in no sense can be attributed to any individual or subjective factors about them, but rather that they flow exclusively from their specific participation in the objective and universally binding contents of the culture. Their representative function thus consists solely in the actualization, personification, and appropriation of preexistent truths, not in the fulfillment of a mandate conferred on them by "normal" people or society at large.

In contrast to this (admittedly largely hypothetical) starting point, Burckhardt goes on to describe, as has already been remarked, a state of affairs characterized by a peculiar dialectic between universality and individuality, objectivity and subjectivity. "Great individuals" create or transform the culture of whole societies (in fact, even humanity in its entirety) in such a way that they, by virtue of being distinct personages in all their singularity and irreplaceability, indeed cannot withdraw into or vanish behind their tasks. Their insights, discoveries, and inventions, binding and fraught with consequences for all, remain inseparably connected with their persons and names: Columbus, Luther, Galilei, Descartes, Copernicus, Newton, Kant, Marx, to name only some of the more outstanding. However, in our present context of concern this means that the representative function does not merely possess a symbolic or ritual significance; on the contrary, it also (and indeed principally) possesses a social or intersubjective significance. The great individuals can be considered as representative in the sense that in their actions they function as proxies for all humans; that this is so can be recognized by the fact that everybody from now on has to live with the consequences of their world-transforming actions.

At the second stage of the development, Burckhardt clings as a matter of principle to the notion of a universal and (in this sense) representative culture. This notion also applies, at least programmatically, to the phase where the intellectuals as a group advance to become the social carriers of culture (particularly cultural innovation or transformation). The rise of what Karl Mannheim referred to as "free-floating" intellectuals is closely connected to the process of social differentiation, where even culture becomes relegated to a separate, relatively autonomous sphere of society. Their specific importance—and this means too the specific importance of the intellectuals—is seen as residing in their mission to create a new, all-embracing body of meanings and values by

going beyond the "disintegration of society" (Marx 1962: 504) and subsuming it into a higher synthesis or unity. The idea that "the ruling thoughts are always the thoughts of those that rule" could only be formulated precisely because there no longer existed a representative culture in the traditional sense. At the same time, though, this formulation of Marx derives its underlying logic from the intention of taking the old, still class-oriented forms of the "cultural superstructure" and replacing them with a truly universal cultural form owing allegiance only to the (one single ) truth or reason (that is, for Marx and many others, the one single science).

I will not go into the details of this viewpiont and the various modifications it has taken. In any case, the logical consequence of it was that the few who believed themselves in possession of the requisite insights and competence came to regard themselves in a highly novel and quite explicit fashion as representatives and delegates of the people. This self-image as representatives of the people (but not their leaders or their advisors) reflects their vision of themselves as the metteurs en scène and articulators (even if only in a vicarious, anticipatory fashion) of the very same clarificational and revaluational process that by right was, and should be, the people's own affair. Thus, the representative role of the intellectuals should—unlike that of Burckhardt's great individuals—only be temporary. The ideas and evaluations of the new cultural order should differ from all preceding orders because they not only apply for everyone, but they also should—in principle at least—readily command rational assent from everyone, especially through the cogency of their reasons. Corresponding to this notion was the demand that the procedure, with whose help the new ideas and values of the intellectuals were obtained and propagated, had to be egalitarian and nonviolent; that is, the debate carried on by the intellectuals had to be both a paradigm for and a forerunner of the coming cultural democratization en masse.

Now a new cultural order that is in this sense "authentic" and based on universal and egalitarian participation has certainly not emerged in place of the representative culture of earlier times. In recent years demands have been raised, with ever-increasing vehemence, for a radical democratization of culture, for a culture for all, for culture as a basic right, or socioculture, which indicates that so far this anticipation has not been fulfilled. What has happened instead is that cultural life in Western society—to the extent that it displays any innovative and creative tendencies at all, as opposed to being merely conservative and backward-looking (the stuff of museums)—now manifests a new form of cultural represen-

tation. This manifestation cannot be explained by any failure on the part of the intellectuals, for example, or by people showing that they have not yet come of age culturally or proved incapable of full cultural autonomy. Rather the idea of a new and comprehensive cultural synthesis, of a new and unified Weltbild, has turned out to be untenable. Both the removal of the cultural sphere from the other subsystems of the social order, and (more important) the internal differentiation of this sphere have progressed even further and have certainly not been subsumed in some higher-level unity. We have witnessed the formation of that particular kind of pluralism or polytheism in the social "value hierarchies," which find expression in the insight "that something can be holy not only despite not being beautiful, but because and only if it is not beautiful . . . and that something can be beautiful not only despite not being good, but by participating in and being what is not good about it . . . (and) something can be true, despite not being and through not being beautiful and holy and good" (Weber 1968: 603). The intellectuals have certainly played a key role in the emergence of this polytheism, despite their universal, holistically minded intentions. But in so doing, they have unwittingly eroded their own position—whether real or merely claimed—as general representatives. But at the same time, new—though indeed much more modest—functions have also come to devolve on them: because the far-reaching autonomization affecting the cultural order and its individual provinces of meaning, with the progressive detachment of the latter from the lives, experiences, and the working world of most people, has created a great need for specialists and experts to work at defining and solving particular specialized and expert problems in the interests of social progress. Moreover, because the general opinion is that these are important problems and even approach existential significance—key problems of principle affecting our personal lives—they cannot be regarded as simply a further case of the progressive division of labor. Rather they present a form of job division that possesses representative character: for the cultural experts are in the position of deciding and doing things that people actually should decide and do for themselves (if only they could); moreover, these are things that are or claim to be of specific importance for the meaning and future fate of people's lives. I have contrasted representative culture and cultural representation and have attempted to place them within a developmental process. The following remarks, in similar provisional fashion, are addressed to the present situation. I will discuss several ways in which cultural representation is manifested and some problems that arise in connection with this manifestation.

V

Daniel Bell (1976: 16) has pointed out—although he is certainly not the first to do so—that the axial principle of modern culture or modernity is actually the "self": "The fundamental assumption of modernity, the thread that has run through Western civilization since the sixteenth century, is that the social unit of society is not the group, the guild, the tribe, or the city, but the person. The Western ideal was the autonomous man who, in becoming self-determining, would have freedom." Bell's thesis is that a "hypertrophic individualism" has emerged from the universalization and generalization of the search for self-realization and self-fulfillment, and this he sees as the decisive cause of the crisis of modernity he has diagnosed. For Bell, the axial principle of any democratic political order is that those ruled should give their assent to their government. Together with the idea of freedom, this principle is based on the modern axial structure of "representation or participation." Bell does not address the idea that the self is of fundamental significance to the political sphere too. But from the standpoint of this idea it must be said that the two processes he mentions—participation and representation—are by no means equivalent, in neither a substantial nor a functional sense. From this standpoint it would appear that representation can be no more than a perhaps inevitable, but still rather poor, substitute for participation.^[9]

In the controversies over democracy, top priority, particularly since the Enlightenment (for example, Rousseau's writings and the Federalist Papers), has been given to clarifying the circumstances under which a representative system founded on the delegation of participatory and decision-making rights is permissible. The issue is particularly clear when political participation is held to be the inalienable right of autonomous individuals. For this same political individualism and liberalism that declares the res publica to be the inalienable affair of each and every subject in practice leads inevitably to the establishment of parliamentary structures. That such an inevitable link existed did not escape the attention of the conservative critics of modern democracy; it led them to reject both individualism and the representative system as the outgrowth of "mechanistic" ways of thinking.^[10] On the other hand, the more recent critique of "the politics of representation" emanating from the new social movements of the day is typically modulated by core democratic ideas and action patterns, and it is, at least in part, quite

radical.^[11] The ideas and action patterns have clearly not yet passed the empirical litmus test; rather we too often find confirmation of the old insight (Griffith 1968: 463) that the alternative to representation is not active participation, that is, acting oneself, but is nonrepresentation or nonself-action.

Representation in political affairs must appear in a dubious light—or may even appear to be quite inadmissable—to the extent that under the basic pretext of modern individualism it elevates political programs to the rank of moral and/or religious imperatives or even replaces them entirely. What was novel and modern about Protestant theology was mainly its insistence that there was, at least in principle, no barrier between the individual believer and his God that might require intercessional and representative offices to be performed by third parties.^[12] Similarly, modern ethical and moral systems, clearly influenced by this theological conviction, are characterized by the basic assumption that any attempt to delegate responsibility and blame would be nonsensical. Moreover, attempts were quite frequently made in the past, and continue to be made, to radically reformulate this basic assumption. At least in the postconventional stage of morality—in the sense distinguished by Kohlberg and Habermas—it now seems that reflection and discourse on moral norms must be also practiced by the individual subject's own person. This would mean that a "proxy" or "advocatory" ethic is acceptable only as an interim solution pending a suitable opportunity or in the case of minors or incompetents who cannot be held to blame.^[13]

This conviction inevitably had a strong influence on the practice of law in modern times and particularly on criminal law—at least for as long as it permitted itself to be guided by the regulative ideas of individual responsibility and capacity for remorse (and also, incidentally, the related idea of atonement). On the other hand, in a legal system (in contradistinction to moral and religious systems) it is impossible to do without norms that are positivistic and formalistic in nature and that are established in advance. Thus a postconventional stage of legal development cannot be envisaged without resorting to unrealistic presuppositions. This and the related fact that only those with the appropriate expertise are able to act successfully within the legal system have been jointly responsible for heading off a radical, broadbased critique of legal representation that would certainly have focused on the status and function of trial lawyers.^[14]

This is not the place to discuss these important and extremely com-

plex problems or to inquire into the likely long-term consequences of the radical detheologization of morality and demoralization of law. Rather, the question to be raised here is how the tension-laden nexus between individuality, participation, and representation finds present expression in the field of culture (conceived in the narrow sense of the word).

It is only natural that attempts to replace the principle of representation with the principles of autonomy and participation (or, for that matter, authenticity [cf. Ferrara 1985]) should encounter great difficulty when the activities in question depend on a formidable amount of expertise and the knowledge in question—even in its most general premises and implications—is inaccessible to the nonexpert. In the culture of modern societies, though, this point applies above all to the scientific and artistic fields. Still, for all the similarities, there also exist significant differences between the two fields.

The development of modern science was closely bound up with the idea that this type of knowledge would lead not only to general validities but also to insights into nature that were universally accessible and verifiable, meaning that it would put an end to the unequal, hierarchical distribution of culturally prized knowledge and deprive the tutelage of the many by the few of its cognitive underpinnings. This expectation has not been fulfilled. In line with implications of its own logic, this form of knowledge has given rise instead to such a refined level of differentiation, specialization, and abstraction that the obtained scientific findings—though admittedly in principle universal and open to all—are de facto only accessible to a small coterie of experts who draw on them as they see fit. This situation, along with the fact that the technological outlets of such knowledge have increasingly infiltrated the daily lives of people, has been responsible for a progressive loss of cognitive competence and cognitive self-determination in modern society. The sheer scope and complexity of the skills, data, and know-how required in various disciplines go well beyond the cognitive and technological competence of most people.

This inevitable consequence of the domination of modern culture by science, rationalization, and differentiation was already noticed by—to take only two examples—Weber (at the end of his treatise "Über einige Kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie") and Simmel (in his comments on the "Tragedy of Culture"). A contemporary author, Stanley Diamond, has formulated this insight as follows: "In the way he relates to his social environment and the level of scientific and technological

knowledge attained, the average primitive literally possesses a much more comprehensive education than most civilized individuals. He can respond to the cultural opportunities open to him in a much more comprehensive and immediate fashion; and this he does not as a consumer or vicariously, but as an actively engaged, authentic person" (1974: 143).

It follows from this—admittedly only relative—"experiential deprivation" that, in many matters of the gravest importance, members of modern society are in the position of having to depend on "secondhand experience" (cf. Gehlen 1964), that is to say, on "delegating experience" to "experienced functionaries" (Blumenberg 1986: 224). The onward march of specialization in knowledge has, as Arnold Gehlen (1963: 17) saw, made the separation between specialist and layperson irreversible: "The result is that one acquiesces without much ado in relinquishing any claim to competence, responsibility and at all being in the know as soon as one leaves one's own speciality; i.e., the individual learns to delegate his judgement." Hence it is not surprising that this delegation of judgment has been institutionalized in the role of the experts wielding their expertise. This role is defined by the expectation that the expert should, in Friedhelm Neidhardt's (1986: 3) formulation, "be able to express dauntingly matters in the kind of language consumers and normal citizens use when making judgements—and what's more, that he should even make their judgements for them."

All this flies in the face of the idées directrices of modernity, as has already been pointed out. And it is this, rather than simply the operation of certain dysfunctional effects, that explains the principal criticism that is brought again and again against the modern "expertocracy" and its reduction of the average person to a state of tutelary bondage to a combined front of scientifically and technologically versed experts (cf. Illich et al. 1979). Still it is not realistic to solve the problem by simply doing away with the experts, as certain critics have occasionally demanded; however the dubious knowledge is looked at, it clearly is only to be had from experts. Likewise it is clear that any attempt to set up "counterexperts" (Hartmann and Hartmann 1982)—while it might be effective at ending power monopoly abuses sometimes committed by unscrupulous experts—holds little promise of solving the main problem, unless of course the experts and the counterexperts were to neutralize each other so that neither could act effectively.

That it would be unwise to overdramatize the situation at least in the case of science is suggested by a single factor: that the experts

themselves depend on scientific insights whose very validity, scope, and utility depend, at least in the long run, on rational scrutiny and evaluation; nor can they escape this fate. Science cannot renounce the idea of the universality of the truths of nature it reveals and the idea that these must stand up to intersubjective scrutiny. Indeed it is precisely this idea that scientific knowledge is universally binding and fraught with consequences for humankind that makes it necessary to encourage an ethic of responsibility for the whole of humanity and also gives some grounds for optimism. What exactly this encouragement would involve cannot detain us further here. May it suffice to reproduce the words of the astronaut, Russell Schweickhart, "Are you separated out to be touched by God, to have some special experience that others cannot have? And you know the answer to that is no . . . you look down and see the surface of that globe that you've lived on all this time, and you know all those people down there, and they are like you, they are you, and somehow you represent them. You are up here as the sensing element, that point out on the end, and that's a humbling feeling. It's a feeling that says you have a responsibility. It's not for yourself" (Keeley 1989: 144).

The situation in the contemporary arts is far more complicated and difficult. The more recent history of the arts has been accompanied by a vociferous critique of their contents that charges that the authority of the works of art, their ability to communicate, and their dependability as a source of value judgments are all steadily declining. The insight that modern poetry has moved from general intelligibility and general significance to mere mannerist, individual, and interesting effects was charged by such an early figure as Friedrich Schlegel ("Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie"). In regard to music and the fine arts, by the beginning of this century (at the latest) such charges had come to be commonplace in critical and public debate.^[15]

The situation in the arts is much more difficult to assess than that in science because in the former it was necessary to go so far to abandon the regulative idea of a common (or, in principle, generalizable) frame of reference of binding force. In contrast, neither religion nor science (nor any other lifesphere or perceptual or experiential tradition laying a claim to self-evident validity and/or exemplary status) can pretend to offer such a frame of reference in the first place. As a result, attempts to delegate judgment in artistic matters are bound to be much more a matter of course than in science but are not the less risky and controversial for all that. To an extent wholly unknown in earlier times, artists

today are called upon to explain, justify, and comment on their works, that is, they are expected not only to produce them but also to play a large role in orchestrating an appropriate reception for them. In addition, a need has developed for a steadily growing number of experts—mainly drawn from media—whose job it is to identify, interpret, and criticize the contemporary arts. These experts are clearly as indispensable as their competence is disputed. It has become difficult to believe that there can exist neither any generally valid, binding knowledge concerning the significance and cultural relevance of the contemporary arts, nor, by implication, is there any need for a corps of experts to interpret it. Paradoxically enough, this is precisely the reason why the widespread doubts about the competence of the art experts have had little overt effect in provoking a resolute attempt at curtailing their interpretive and communicative mandate. This paradox may in turn be connected with the evident fact that, despite all rhetorical assertions to the contrary, the contemporary arts have little to do with truth and reality, at least in the "old European" sense of these concepts, and certainly nothing to do with the "full weight of life" encountered on the personal or social levels (cf. Enzensberger 1988: 95). Indeed many of the leading lights of postmodernism have recently tried to interpret this very fact as one of the great advantages of the contemporary arts, to be welcomed as an expression of final emancipation from all extraneous bonds.^[16]

A separate important and complex problem can only be briefly addressed here, and it concerns the role the mass media play in connection with cultural representation in contemporary society. Evidently it was the development of the mass media—first the printed word then, above all, radio and television—that was responsible for the fact that a cultural division of labor could ever be practiced at all as a form of cultural representation, or—which in the end boils down to the same thing—that it could ever be interpreted as such and so have the stamp of social legitimation placed on it. In highly differentiated mass society, the power wielded by the media alone is sufficient to create and maintain the pretense that, between those responsible for the production of cultural objects and/or pronouncing authoritatively on their meaning and merits on the one hand and the great mass of laypeople on the other, there really does exist a social, if not indeed a communicative, tie predicated on the understanding that these selfsame cultural experts represent all the nonexperts (with all that this implies for their public prominence and answerability to criticism). And to the extent that this is true,

the mass media can be said to provide the technological and institutional infrastructure for the phenomenon of cultural representation.

Nonetheless, in recent times we find that the critique of the "expertocracy" has increasingly joined forces with the critique of the "mediocracy" to charge that the sound and the visual media in particular are used to sharply bring out the questionable side of cultural representation—and not merely as its star witness or shining instantiation. The critical voices point particularly to the extremely onesided, barely interactional or communicative character of the cultural representatives. At the same time the media promote (or demand), especially for pluralistic societies, that the cultural experts should suitably orchestrate and dramatize the manner in which they present themselves; even though such theatricalization will, at least in the long run, prove destructive if (and to the extent that) it should ever succeed in undermining trust in the competence of the experts and the necessity for their existence. It does seem that the criticism leveled against the mediocracy is not so much directed against the right to represent as such (or against the failure of those represented to issue an express mandate to that effect); rather criticism focuses on the manner in which the experts hosted by the media play their roles. However, it can hardly escape notice—and to a certain extent is probably also inevitable—that the medium most dependent on theatrical orchestration, namely television, is much more given to encourage narcissism, triviality, and an emphasis on dramatic effects than to treat seriously the materials presented. Nevertheless, just such a tendency would appear to be more inherently likely, for very much the same reasons as already given, in several areas of cultural life (the arts, politics, and religion) than in others (for example, science). To the extent, though, that it succeeds in gaining ground, we will be faced not only with a progressive loss of authentic experience and a confusion of mediated with actual experience but also with the disintegration of our ability to tell the real and the necessary apart from the bogus and the irrelevant. If this ever happens, the dream of cultural representation will have succeeded in destroying its own indispensable presuppositions. One thing is clear: as a staged happening, as a show put on for the entertainment and idle distraction of a society of onlookers, cultural representation can have no long-term future. For in a state of cultural entropy, where both everything and nothing is real and important, it will soon lose all significance, even of the most dubious, far-fetched, or contrived kind.

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