Representation, the Real, Postmodernism

"It is only in the absence of the original that representation may take place," writes Crimp in his discussion of photographic postmodernism. Pop art gives us repetition, but repetition of what?

I was interested that Foster mentioned Barthes punctum in Return to the Real, but I have to say I think he made a mistake in referring to Barthes first definition of the punctum as form. For me, punctum as intensity is much more relevant to the question of the place of the real within postmodernism. For if the real can or cannot exist within the image, why do I care what the form of this alleged 'reality' may be? I'm not punctured by the tear in the head of the woman in Ambulance Disaster, but by the question of whether or not this piece even shows a real at all. The real is inherently tied up for me in the question of death, which is why I think that to question the role of the punctum as the revelation that nothing might be real is appropriately connected to punctum as intensity. Barthes punctum as intensity was Time, was Death - and the crisis of the representation of the real points, for me, directly to the question of death. What's more real than death? In fact, I think that there is no reality above and beyond death.

That's why I enjoyed Crimp's little anecdote about Sherrie Levine and her appropriation of an Edward Weston image. If you finally get past the ostensible layers of representation that shield the boy from the viewer, you find that the 'true' boy himself is evacuated of representing anything. He is no longer around as he was in the picture - that boy has died. Levine's postmodernism thus gives us a repetition of the evacuation of the reality/representation dynamic. Warhol's repetitions show us the Subject evacuated of any essence above and beyond mere posturing. This is all that can be repeated. Nothing can be represented, for there is no real in which to represent it. At least, there is no reality that can be approached (or more properly, reached) by art. And here I mean art not strictly in the sense of paintings, photographs, and the like. Thought is aesthetic, too. Our relation to the world is always mediated, and what is represented in front of our eyes is never what is real. Death is the only real because it is the only time at which the politics of vision, repetition, representation no longer matter.

I feel like this is kind of a depressing conclusion that these readings led me to. Oh well.