Peripheral Visions in the Globalizing Present: Space, Mobility, Aesthetics (Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race, 31)

This volume sheds new light on how today’s peripheries are made, lived, imagined and mobilized in a context of rapidly advancing globalization. Focusing on peripheral spaces, mobilities and aesthetics, it presents critical readings of, among others, Indian caste quarters, the Sahara, the South African backyard and European migration, as well as films, novels and artworks about marginalized communities and repressed histories. Together, these readings insist that the peripheral not only needs more visibility in political, economic and cultural terms, but is also invaluable for creating alternative perspectives on the globalizing present. Peripheral Visions combines sociological, cultural, literary and philosophical perspectives on the periphery, and highlights peripheral innovation and futurity to counter the lingering association of the peripheral with stagnation and backwardness.

Esther Peeren is Associate Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her publications include Intersubjectivity and Popular Culture: Bakhtin and Beyond (Stanford, 2008) and The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility (Palgrave, 2014). Hanneke Stuit is Assistant Professor of Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. Her recent publications deal with community and ubuntu, including Ubuntu Strategies: Constructing Spaces of Belonging in Contemporary South African Culture (Palgrave, 2016). Astrid Van Weyenberg is Lecturer of Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University and a member of the Leiden University Centre for the Arts (LUCAS). She is the author of The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy (Rodopi, 2013).