Mapping the forbidden

Abstract

Mapping the forbidden is in itself forbidden. And in my understanding the most forbidden of everything forbidden is that which refuses to be categorized, that which is neither this nor that, ungraspable forces which do not sit still but hop capriciously about. Aristotle consequently knew what he did, when he between the two concepts of identity and difference inserted a third position called “the excluded middle”, a non-bridgeable gap which in the same figure unites and separates, liberates and imprisons; an unruly space located beyond the realm of conventional reason; a no man’s land of liminality which the well behaved must never enter. But Aristotle also argued that what one cannot do perfectly, one must do as well as one can.