Carnival desire: representation and discourse

In the preceding chapters I have described expressionism's avantgarde function in terms of its creation of a variety of oppositional discourses. As we saw in chapter 2, these radical discourses are characterized not so much by their adoption of a pragmatically “revolutionary” or political mode of criticism, as rather by the attempt to inscribe a “rebellious” openness into its forms which destabilizes the image and – in contrast to the conventional organic work – denies the reader any sense of cognitive fixity and conceptual closure. This turns out to be a highly appropriate response, given that the authority of the “classical” modes of representation correspondingly lies not so much in the explicitly ideological character of their depiction of events, objects and characters but rather in another dimension entirely. It is ingrained in the very structure of the representational system itself as a means of organizing the recipient's experience. For the almost imperceptible and unchallenged air of authority in classical representation derives from the peculiarly deceptive nature of its construction: it creates a unitary organization of narration, signification, and discourse, and prevails upon the reader or spectator to conform to its power-structure and to enjoy vicariously the sense of coherence, omniscience and mastery it engenders, while at the same time disguising itself as a transparent and “objective” window on the world.