The invented periphery: constructing Europe in debates about "Anglo hegemony" in geography

Abstract

For a few years, a debate has been ongoing about a hegemony (in academic geography) of the English language, of "Anglo-American" journals and of the approaches developed in the North America and the UK. In many of the contributions to the debate, other languages and those who speak them appear as excluded, oppressed and forced to submit to Anglo-hegemony. But what kind of hegemony is this? The situation appears as a postcolonial one, and therefore it should be analysed using postcolonial theory. From this perspective, there is on the one hand an orientalist discourse, in which the coloniser's knowledge is the only valid one. These discourses can also be applied by elites in the (former) colonies. On the other hand, debates about the oppression of the "own" identity through the (former) colonisers are often means of an emerging postcolonial elite trying to legitimize their position. In order to analyse the debate about Anglohegemony, I draw on these concepts of hegemony. The debate is, so the argument of the paper, connected with a European elite formation-an elite that considers itself as transnational, multilingual, hybrid and anti-hegemonic.

Tauchgänge zur German Theory

“…Für das akademische Fach der Geographie steht diese "Provinzialisierung" noch weitgehend aus: Nicht nur besteht weiterhin eine grosse Kluft in der akademischen Wissensproduktion zwischen globalem Norden und Süden (Santos und Meneses, 2020); auch die theoretischen Debatten innerhalb des Nordens verdecken oft sprachliche Hierarchien und Asymmetrien in der Wissensproduktion. Zwar warnt Ulrich Best (2009) zu Recht davor, beide Formen der "Peripherisierung" auf die gleiche Stufe zu stellen, doch sollten dabei die diskursiven Relationen der Ungleichheit innerhalb des Nordens selbst nicht verschüttet werden.…”

Geography after Babel – a view from the French province

“…In keeping with this, we locate this paper's analysis within Francophone geography, not only to further highlight the diversity of "other geographies", but also to assess the geographies of power -both internal (e.g., institutional) and external (the existence of a subsystem) -to the so-called periphery (Rodriguez-Pose, 2006). In so doing, we follow Best's (2009) suggestion to use a postcolonial perspective when analyzing geographies of knowledge production.…”

Social spatiality: some rudimentary thoughts on the epistemology of Benno Werlen

“…This is an important point to stress given the fruitful engagement with social theory by a number of human geographers following in the wake of Bartels' initial gesture; it is also important in the context of an unfortunate absence of a sustained engagement with Werlen's ideas outside of German-speaking geographical networks, the translation of his doctoral thesis into U. Strohmayer: Social spatiality: some rudimentary thoughts on the epistemology of Benno Werlen English notwithstanding (Werlen, 1993). This asymmetry in reception and engagement across national borders underlies and informs a ruinous continuity within human geographical discourse and practice (see Best, 2009;Minca, 2013).…”