ABSTRACT
Introduction: the postcolonial condition Among the many problems put forth in current retheorizations of representation is the imperative to distinguish ‘self from ‘other’. In this paper, I pursue the attempt to undermine this totalizing logic and argue for a representational practice that is premised on the mutual imbrication of ‘us’ and ‘them’. My point of departure is the argument made by Stallybrass and White (1986) that divisions and discriminations governing the separation of self/other and us/them are premised on corollary demarcations between high/ low, public/private, and history/memory. I suggest that rethinking the self/other problematic requires paying close attention to the ways in which this logic of the ‘subject’ is made fundamentally unstable in the domains of daily life-in and by those discourses which have, traditionally, been relegated as ‘other’.
