The Metaphysics of American Law

s from the infinite data of everyday life to provide a structure that determines which particular details are relevant in her story, the interpretive constructs of an ideology abstract from the thick texture of the world to provide a structure that determines which particular aspects of the world are seen as meaningful, and finally which aspects are seen. When particular representational categories for dividing up the world are reified and achieve a hegemony in a particular community, description is taken as fact rather than "mere" opinion or ideology. In such a context, the social conventions for representing the world are viewed as flowing from the way the world really is. Their contingent and provisional status is supressed. Fiction is presented as truth.