Nelly Richard's "Postmodernism and Periphery" maps out the ways in which "peripheral cultures"--the Latin American culture, specifically--in the wake of colonialism have been marginalized by modernism and also postmodernism. The values of postmodernism, she claims, originally seemed to reverse the hegemony enforced by Eurocentric postcolonialism, elevating the "copy" to a higher status than the "original:" "The very heterogeneity of the experiences which have created a Latin American space out of its multiple and hybrid pasts creates, at least on the surface, the very qualities of fragmentation and dispersion associated with the semantic erosion characteristic of the crisis of modernity and modernism as its cultural dominant" (Richard 356). To her despair, however, postmodern ideals then disregard any notion of a superior between the original culture and the copycat culture: "There are many instances in postmodernist discourse aimed at convincing one of the obsolescence of the opposition centre / periphery, and of the inappropriateness of continuing to see ourselves as the victims of colonialization. The significance of these categories has disappeared, the argument goes, as has the distinction between model and copy due to the "planetary spread" of technological culture" (Richard 356)... Even though this reveals a failure by postmodernism to deliver what Richard seemed to expect as karmic justice, it does, at least, seem to balance the scales, so to speak, between the centric culture and the previously marginalized. Even this, however, Richard condemns as hypocritical and persisting the marginalization of Latin American culture: "Postmodernism defends itself against the destabilizing threat of the 'other' by integrating it back into a framework which absorbs all differences and contradictions. The centre, though claiming to be in disintegration, still operates as a centre: filing away any divergences into a system of codes whose meanings, both semantically and territorially, it continues to administer by exclusive right" (Richard 357). While postmodernism claims equality between the cultures, postmodernism is still European philosophy which is imposed upon the peripheral culture. The Eurocentric power claims that the postcolonial cultures are equal and free of it, but by adhering to this sudden belief of equality, postcolonial cultures are still mimicking Europe.

Now, after that lengthy summary, I come to my proposed issue. There is clearly nothing that Europe can do or say that will satisfy critics like Richard. The problem lies in the behavior of the peripheral cultures, and their continual mimicry. Richard, herself, is a perfect example of why the perceived injustice she is addressing persist. She dislikes the Eurocentric ideas that are present in postmodernism, but she is granting them value not only by acknowledging the injustices of postmodernism against Latin America, but by entering the Eurocentric discourse herself and giving Latin America a voice in it.

Richard, Nelly. “Postmodernism and Periphery.” Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Ed. Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 351-359