Writing Ourselves Otherwise: Representation, Specularity, and Epistemic Humility

Abstract

Sylvia Wynter seeks nothing less than a redescription of the human, an ecumenical self-representation that would overcome the violent exclusions of coloniality and overturn the reign of Man. Given that our present concept of representation sustains the universalising overrepresentation of Man, what transformations are required for this new image of the human to surface? What are the epistemological implications for radical aesthetics today? This article brings Wynter into dialogue with Jacques Derrida to address these questions through the examination of colonial narratives and counternarratives; namely, David Lloyd’s reading of the Kantian-Hegelian dialectic of consciousness, and Annalee Newitz’s speculative fiction Autonomous.