Dependence Theory and the Center-Periphery Relation (revisited) As Critical Stance

This paper proposal is delineated foremost towards two main questions. On the one side, it focuses on certain aspects of critique, and therefore will directly take up the argument found in the book Dependence and development in Latin America. An essay of sociological interpretation, written by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, first published in 1970 and written during the second half of the 1960s, a seminal work of the so called dependence theory. This aims at shedding light on this pioneering interpretation of center-periphery relations, bearing a tight but critically distanced connection to Marxism when depicting its concept of underdevelopment (subdesenvolvimento) as a structural product of development, while at the same time emphasizing the relevance and core contribution of a sociologically oriented perspective to oppose itself to a dominant economic discourse.

Therefore it establishes a twofold theoretical counterhegemonic argumentation, challenging mainstream scientific views in terms of their disciplinary orientation as well as putting into question some of its central arguments. On the other side I wish to engage in a dialogue with other relatively seen more recent (critical) perspectives from what has been deemed as a peripheral standpoints. More specifically I seek to unravel the above reflections to circumscribe the theoretization of the Austrian-Brazilian thinker Roberto Schwarz, notably in his essays “Misplaced ideas” (1977) and “Nationalism by elimination” (or “National by subtraction”, in a free translation of his Portuguese text, published in 1986), where he attempts to reflect on the originality and “placing” or “misplacing” of certain ideas. As far as I see it, going back to or elucidating these approaches could contribute steadfastly to postcolonial as well as decolonial thought in its form and simultaneously concerning its content.