On Hercules' threshold

epistemic pluralities and oceanic realignments in the euro-atlantic space

Nicoletta Pireddu

pp. 19-45

in: Tania Gentic, Francisco LaRubia-Prado (eds), Imperialism and the wider atlantic, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Pireddu reopens a conceptual gateway in the Euro-American Atlantic space, recasting the foundational image of Hercules' Pillars in terms of threshold. She attempts to overcome the asymmetry in the contact zone between colonizing and colonized cultures, but also to unburden Europe of the weight that its imperial past still exerts on the intellectual discourse by and on Europe. Focusing on Morin and Matvejević's theorization of the Mediterranean, Cassano's "Southern thought," Magris's Mitteleuropa, and the self-decolonizing fiction of Saramago and Bouraoui, Pireddu invites us to think beyond ideological co-optations, unable to transcend stereotypical polarizations between a Eurocentric, universalist thought and a non-European, localist approach. She thus challenges the Global South/Global North conceptual frontier, rethinking Euro-Atlantic relations beyond distinctions between cardinal points or center-periphery dichotomies.