The Centre-periphery in Knowledge Production in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

This paper examines the new configurations in global relations and the centrality of knowledge as the emerging currency in that relationship. Taking into account the vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and especially the subduing effect that this has had on Marxist scholars and scholarship as the once core critical paradigm, the paper argues that the 'centre-periphery' fault line and dichotomy may be far less obvious to the younger generation than to the predecessors. This has to do with the fact that on the one hand, discourses of concealment with benign exteriors have so permeated the life spaces including those in the 'periphery', making it ever more difficult to separate what is real and what is not. On the other hand, the forces of the new global economy have led to structural acquiescence of the economies of the South to the extent that one witnesses the poor countries becoming quite desperate to become, and remain, attractive to globalised capital. In the far less categorical scenario in which the younger generation of scholars in the North and the South are now growing, the paper first presents an argument for a closer scrutiny of knowledge, its construction, legitimation and dissemination in the light of intensifying North-South disparities. Second, it argues for recognition to be given to scholarships that have transcended this dangerous ravine. It finally argues for even greater acknowledgment to those scholars in the South who, with their piercing de-constructive and generative theorisation and analyses of knowledge as an intrinsic part of democratic politics, promise to bring out the hitherto underplayed issue of cognitive justice and the challenge of the integration of knowledge systems.