Liminal Epistemological Spaces

Abstract

The Anthropocene is not only an environmental crisis but also a crisis of knowledge. The dominant ways we produce and organize knowledge are complicit in reproducing the conditions of this polycrisis. This master’s thesis asks how design, in the encounter with philosophy, can help think otherwise in order to support the creation of non-modern knowledge. Using a research-through-design approach, informed by more-than-human design, decolonial thought, and posthumanist philosophy, the thesis progresses through four iterative design experiments that each build on what emerged from the previous. The thesis expands on transdisciplinary methods and the concept of liminality in design research, after identifying two gaps: liminality has been used only analytically, not generatively, and existing transdisciplinary methods are not suited for knowledge production that exceeds modern epistemology.The research makes three key contributions. First, it proposes that liminality can be used generatively to suspend modern categories in knowledge production, presenting liminal epistemological spaces where non-modern knowledge can emerge. Second, it develops material correspondence as a designerly approach of thinking-with and -through artefacts as a means for entering epistemological liminal spaces in transdisciplinary encounters. Third, it identified traces for recognizing when a liminal epistemological space is entered, along with conditions for material correspondence to support the cultivation of such spaces.The non-modern knowledge that emerged was about positionality: in the final design experiments, participants generated knowledge about their positionality through felt, embodied, and relational means. This points to a form of knowledge production that exceeds modern logics of categorization, representationalism, and dualist structures. The findings are based on a situated and limited exploratory inquiry, and should therefore not be seen as generalizable nor ‘validated.’ This thesis offers a humble and fallible step towards claiming design as a practice that, when oriented towards epistemological openness, can contribute to creating the conditions under which non-modern knowledge might emerge.