From Romance to Reality: An Epilogue

An Epilogue

Abstract

If we have learned anything from intellectual debates of the last half century it is that representations are political acts, even when (and perhaps particularly when) they are deployed in the most innocent ways. Beyond this simple recognition, however, lies a host of complexities: Whose politics? Politics for what purposes? How does this politics fare when representations change hands, are exported to different contexts, are recycled and reclaimed by different agents for different purposes? Some representations have extraordinary longevity, clinging to the places, peoples, and things they are supposed to represent like a parasite. Others travel though time and space but can undergo sometimes surprisingly radical transformations. Those who are represented can appropriate the representations of which they are the object and turn their political meaning on their heads, but this can also backfire.