Abstract
Remembering that maps are one of the most common cultural metaphors in our conception of the world, it is significant that the history of cartography is also the history of a certain rationalization: of how an order that measures and cuts up surfaces to articulate territories of signification and representation is, itself, subject to order. Both the geometric models and the visual categories employed by map-makers to formulate specific images of spatiality reflect the structures of knowledge which define the philosophical and cultural thinking of a tradition. From time immemorial the concentric representation of space has drawn an image of finiteness and completeness which symbolizes that form of universal knowledge whose domain is enclosed — sealed — within the perimeter of the circle. This symbolization operates as an image of totality, establishing a fixed point which permits the measured evaluation of relationships of proximity and distance that either draw together or separate all other points distributed in space: ‘Each historical period or cultural tradition selects a fixed point which functions as the centre of its current maps, a physical symbolic space to which a privileged position is attributed and from which all other spaces are distributed in an organized manner’1 The privileged position which this centre defends, and then translates into authoritarian roles — taking decisions, fixing rules, exercising control, etc. — stands out most forcefully in the opposition we can mark as centre/periphery.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Bonaventura de Souza Santos, ‘Una cartografia simbolica de las representaciones sociales’, Nueva Sociedad, no. 116 (Caracas) (November–December 1991), p. 23.
Christine Buci-Glucksmann, La raison baroque: De Baudelaire à Benjamin (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1984), p. 34.
Ibid.
Claudio Magris, ‘Esayo sobre el fin’, cited in ‘La remoción de lo moderno: Vienna del 1900’ ed. Nicolas Casullo, (Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión, 1991), pp. 43–4. [trans. Graciela Ovejero]
Jesus Martin Barbero, De los medios a las mediaciones (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1987), p. 165.
José Joaquin Brunner, Un espejo trizado (Santiago: Flacso, 1988), p. 219.
Ibid, pp. 217–18 [trans. Graciela Ovejero].
Ibid.
See Pedro Morandé, Cultura y Modernizacion en America Latina (Santiago: Universidad Católica, 1984); especially ch. 12.
Renato Ortiz cited by Nestor García Canclini, Culturas hibridas (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1990), p. 290.
James Clifford in The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 338.
See Fredric Jameson ‘Postmodernism and consumer society’, in Hal Foster (ed), The Anti-aesthetic: Essays in Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983), p. 113.
Bernardo Subercaseaux, ‘La appropiación cultural en el pensamiento latinoamericano’, Estudios Públicos, no. 31 (Santiago), p. 42.
Alberto Moreiras, ‘Transculturacion y perdida del sentido’, Nuevo Texto Critico, no. 6 (1991) (Stanford University), p. 108.
Gianni Vattimo, La sociedad transparente (Barcelona: Paidos, 1990), p. 81.
Gayatri Spivak cited by George Yúdice, ‘El conflicto de postmodernidades’, Nuevo Texto Critico, no. 7 (1991) (Stanford University), p. 29.
Following the argument developed by Edward Said in the interview ‘In the Shadow of the West’, in Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture (New York: The New Museum, 1990), p. 95.
Jean Franco, ‘Going Public: Reinhabiting the Private’, in G. Yúdice, J. Franco and J. Flores (eds), On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 80.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1996 John C. Welchman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Richard, N. (1996). The Cultural Periphery and Postmodern Decentring: Latin America’s Reconversion of Borders. In: Welchman, J.C. (eds) Rethinking Borders. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12725-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12725-2_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-12727-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-12725-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)