Representationùthe production of meaning through language, discourse, and imageùoccupies a central place in current studies on culture. This broad-ranging text offers a comprehensive outline of how visual images, language, and discourse work as "systems of representation." The chapters explain a variety of approaches to representation, bringing to bear concepts from semiotic, discursive, psychoanalytic, anthropological, sociological, feminist, art-historical, and Foucauldian models of representation. The editors explore representation as a signifying practice in a rich diversity of social contexts and institutional sites, including the use of photography in the construction of national identity and culture; the poetics and politics of exhibiting other cultures in ethnographic museums; fantasies of the racialized other in popular media, film, and image; the construction of masculine identities in discourses of consumer culture and advertising; and the gendering of narratives in television soap operas. Representation analyzes contested and critical questions of meaning, truth, knowledge, and power in representation, and the relations between representation, pleasure, and fantasy. Accessible but not simplified, the book offers a unique perspective for teachers and students in cultural studies and related fields

斯图尔特・霍尔(Stuart Hall)，英国文化研究“伯明翰学派”的代表人物。现任英国开放大学社会学教授。主要著作有（包括编著）：《仪式抵抗：战后英国的青年亚文化》（1976）、《编码/解码》（1980）、《文化节传媒语言》（1981）、《调控危机》（1982）、《艰难的复兴之路：撒切尔主义与左派的危机》（1988）、《现代性的构成的体》（1992）等。