From the margin: Orphanhood, autonomy, and a critique of universalism

Abstract

This article offers a situated reflection on autonomy as a political, existential, and epistemic task, taking Borges’s El escritor argentino y su tradición as its point of departure. Through the concept of «creative orphanhood», distance from dominant traditions is reframed as a source of agency. Engaging Sartrean existentialism and postcolonial theory, freedom is defined as a situated labor that must negotiate both the normative force of tradition and the structural constraints of geopolitical subordination. The question of relevance – what truly matters – guides a normative project for building a life of one’s own. Six principles orient this project: eradication of poverty and inequality; critical defense of human rights; democratic pluralism; socioenvironmental justice; production of situated knowledge; and activation of cultural heritage. The essay argues that peripheral locations constitute privileged standpoints from which to reimagine universalism through concrete historical experience, advancing an ethics of the project that turns exposure into horizon and the margin into foundation.