Sarance Editorial No. 50: The Epistemological Tradition and the Critique of Representationalism

Abstract

The text offers a critical reflection on how knowledge of reality is constructed today, shaped by advances in neuroscience and technology. It revisits the debate between representationalism—which views reality as a mental or rational interpretation—and scientific realism—which posits an objective world accessible through science—arguing that both perpetuate the ideals of modernity: rationalization, technification, and universalism. Drawing on thinkers such as Echeverría, Heidegger, Rorty, Dreyfus, and Taylor, the text critiques the modern separation between subject and object, and the homogenization of knowledge that excludes affective, bodily, and cultural dimensions of understanding. In response to these dualisms, it proposes the affective turn and Deleuze’s notion of assemblage, which conceives reality as a dynamic network of relations and mutual affects. The text calls for a middle-ground approach—neither absolutist nor relativist—to build a plural and complementary view of reality. Finally, it advocates for a “poetic science” that goes beyond mere object identification, combining rigor with interpretive openness, as Gadamer suggests, to confront the apparent crisis of the social and human sciences and to imagine new, plural ways of producing knowledge.