The DILEMMAS OF CONSTRUCTING A PERIPHERAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY

A Reflection on Brazilian Critical Thought

Abstract

In this article, I investigate the importance of constructing a peripheral perspective on modernity, its crises, and its potential. Following the critique of Eurocentric universalism and the problematization of "epistemic injustice," I propose a specific pathway through Brazilian critical thought, analyzing the conditions of possibility for a decentralized and decolonized critical approach to modernity, which would offer heuristic and critical advantages over the Eurocentric perspective. To this end, I examine how the Brazilian dialectical tradition, especially through Paulo Arantes, formulates a critique of capitalism by inverting the temporality of modern progress, revealing the periphery as an anticipation of the capitalist future. I also highlight the "extramodern" critique of modernity by Brazilian indigenous thinkers, such as Davi Kopenawa, who contrast the modern destructive view of nature with the indigenous perspective. However, I argue that it is necessary to adopt an internal viewpoint on modernity to see its potential for openness to alterity, especially in the face of the global ecological crisis. I conclude by exploring Brazilian aesthetic modernism, particularly Oswald de Andrade's Anthropophagy, as a perspective that strengthens the creative and non-Eurocentric dimension of the "modern project", or even transmodern in Dussel's terms,  in response to contemporary challenges to critical theory.