Introduction to the Special Section: Periphery as process and space

Abstract

This dossier proposes a critical reflection on the concept of the periphery, understood both as a spatial or geographical category and as a dynamic, relational, and multidimensional process. Challenging approaches that oppose centre and periphery according to logics of distance, deprivation, and subordination, the periphery is framed here as a material and symbolic space produced through power relations, capitalist dynamics, and social, cultural, and aesthetic practices of resistance. Drawing on critical geography, urban sociology, and cultural studies, the dossier argues for a distinction between geographical periphery and peripheralisation as a historical and political process that may unfold both in remote areas and within ostensibly central territories.

The dossier also highlights the social, cultural, and epistemological productivity of peripheral spaces, emphasising their role as sites of innovation, insurgent forms of citizenship, and knowledge production. In this context, landscape—understood as a relational device that condenses temporalities, regimes of visibility, and spatial practices—offers a key framework for understanding how peripheral territories are lived, contested, and represented.

As both a medium of representation and a practice that generates space, memory, and critical thought, cinema naturally occupies a central place in this approach. By analysing films and cinematic practices from diverse geographical and historical contexts, the essays gathered here interrogate counter-hegemonic aesthetics and forms of symbolic resistance. In this way, Peripheral Spaces affirms the periphery as an epistemological site and cinema as a critical tool capable of destabilising hierarchies, challenging dominant imaginaries, and reconfiguring ways of seeing and thinking about the contemporary world.