Beyond the metaphor of "irradiation". Peripheries as a point of view

GRONDONA, ANA

Princeton

Workshop; Social Science Summer School IAS; 2018

Institute of Advanced Studies

Our point of departure for this paper are a series of inquiries that, while examining the ways in which certain forms of knowledge, problematizations and dispositifs deployed in peripheral contexts were met with issues regarding "circulation" and "translation". We place these terms in quotation marks because they are dense notions that merit an analysis (especially in the case of the latter1) that would exceed our current purpose: to destabilize the metaphor of "irradiation", which seems to operate in a furtive and relative unquestioned manner. Rather than asking ourselves how the centre/s ?influence/s? the periphery, we will try, throughout this text, to invert the sense of the question and sound out the resonances of the peripheries in the centre/s. We use here the spatial metaphor of centres/peripheries with a global geopolitical scope, to refer to international division of physical and intellectual labour. However, it is likely that some of our reflections may be relevant to think regional, national, local and/or institutional levels.To develop our objectives, we have organized the text into two main sections. In the first one, much more extensive, we present a typology that presents some of the main ways in which that relationship between centres and "peripheries" has presented itself in different research (largely our own). Then, based on the elements laid out in this cast of figures, in the second section, more synthetic, we propose a more theoretical-epistemological oriented reflection around our main concern: the place that should be accorded to the resonances of the peripheries in the productionof problems, modes of knowledge and dispositifs of the centres.