ABSTRACT

Representation is a fundamental process of all human life; it underlies the development of mind, self, societies and cultures. To represent, that is, to make present what is actually absent through the use of symbols is central to the ontogenetic development of the human child, is at the basis of the construction of languages and the acquisition of speech, is crucial to the establishment of interrelations that constitute the social order and is the material through which cultures are formed and transformed across time and space. The reality of the human world is in its entirety made of representation; in fact there is no sense of reality for our human world without the work of representation. To paraphrase Roland Barthes on narrative (yet another form of representation), representation is just there, like life itself.