"BE YOURSELF. BUT DON’T OVERSTEP THE LINE"

BEYOND REPRESENTATION

If we are to move beyond the constraints of representationalism, we must embrace an alternative mode of knowing—one that does not rely on a priori constructs but emerges through direct material engagement with the world. Knowledge is not a static reflection but a process, unfolding through interaction, embodiment, and lived experience.

What this dualistic framework fails to acknowledge is that we are inseparably interwoven with reality—absolute objectivity is an illusion. Representation, at its core, entails internalizing an external image to validate its existence. But what if knowledge did not have to be mediated in this way?

Representationalism happens to be an inevitable byproduct of the Cartesian way of thinking that is so deeply ingrained within Western culture. A very clear division between the knower and the known; the internal and the external, the subject and the object. The knowing happens from a distance within the realms of this discourse. What we have failed to consider here is that we are inseparably interwoven with the reality that an absolute objectivity is impossible.

The construction of a sense of self and this complementary position of the other — as in being defined in terms of and in reference to the image that reifies the normative identity groups —  are derived from a logic that dictates reflexive ways of producing knowledge. Namely, representationalism.

Betwixt and between host and guest, socially unstructured... The Other remains a complementary figure to the dominant group, never fully autonomous.