Original scientific paper

A COLONIZED THOUGHT: PERIPHERY WITHOUT DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE?

Vjeran Katunarić

Abstract

The reduction of development to the liberalisation of a market, then, the collapse of a socialist hemisphere and, at last, the reorientation of a developmental thought to the programmes of structural adaptation, and also to cultural topics, are the circumstances that have brought the periphery to a situation without theoretical and practical developmental perspective. The author in this essay mostly discusses on the problems of the lack of developmental perspective of periphery within three focuses of modern developmental thought: developmental studies, postcolonial studies and the idea of sustainable development. In addition, the author becomes aware of the insufficiency of considering the periphery in forms of radical
critique of the West and capitalism. Among the reasons of narrowing the developmental perspective to developed countries and the transformation of periphery into ’a dead end’ of developmental thought, the author emphasizes the two: growing of cultural pessimism in the mainstream and weakening of peripheral resisting power en route of propagating of nationalism. In the final part of the essay, the author discusses the inferior position of science on the periphery, especially the low status of domestic scientific literature in relation to the imported7translated literature, and the fact that only a part of domestic fictional literature on the market to a certain degree is in close competition with foreign literature. Therefore, a question is put ‐ is it not a predominantly literary articulation of self‐assertion and identity the proof of ‘exotic quality’ of periphery, as the filed with noticeable literary sensibility, but with ‘wild thought’, without cognitive development which is embodied in a science; or, such context has to be viewed as a place of possible encounters of artistic and scientific discourse in a mutual endeavour of decolonising developmental thought, and then praxis also.

Keywords

colonised thought,; post‐colonialism; cultural pessimism; periphery; nationalism; science

Hrčak ID:

7517

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/7517

Publication date:

7.7.2006.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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