AustLit

'How to 'abandon Europe'? The oxymoronic quest to semantically or ideologically discard the signs of that which signifies modern thought and historical rationality in Europe's colonies is dismissed by Rama as futile. However, when the postcolonial relations of 'peripheries' to the European 'center' are examined the engagements between t he colonies and Europe are not characterized by straightforwardness either. While complete abandonment may not be possible, neither is complete affiliation. As such, postcoloniality can still be seen as a luminal state in its ambivalent positioning between what might be seen as originary Europe and a derivative periphery.

This article takes the periphery as a transnational, multilingual space, and it takes postcoloniality beyond the Anglosphere. It tests the hypothesis that there are postcolonial legacies shared across the Global South. Of central importance here is how postcoloniality is understood in Australia and Latin America, and how this is communicated in contemporary poetry pensamiento latinoamericano ['Latin American thought'].' (p. 189)