Memory, history and Culture: Interpretation/ understanding in the arts

Abstract

We propose in this paper, to analyse “Las Meninas” by Diego Velazquez following a discursive perspective, which focuses on the text that leads to speeches and presuppose a subject who is questioned by ideology and crossed by the unconscious. The motivation for discussion is in the art particularities, which we explain by discussing the work of memory, language operation in history, and what is common in each culture. We leave behind the possibility of reading / interpreting / understanding the aesthetic materiality by only considering what is beautiful. Thus we do not forget the socio–historical and cultural context. The main theorists who illuminate our reading are Pêcheux, Foucault and Orlandi. . We base our reflections, on the mirror and its function as the way it establishes the effects of senses by representation. Representation is not understood as a copy but as the possibility of establishing new meanings.