Reimagining Europe

This chapter illustrates the epistemic potential of the discourse on peripheries and the approach of decentering the center by using Albert Camus’ L’Etranger and Kamel Daoud's “counter-novel” The Meursault Investigation . The text shows how the center/periphery dichotomy is focused on categories like visibility and power and illustrates how a peripheralized perspective can bring important and neglected aspects to the fore with the aim of contributing to epistemic justice. The discourse on peripheries can plausibly be linked to the discourse on colonization and de-colonization. The view offered by Daoud challenges the idea of the “central perspective” provided by Camus. Inhabiting an epistemic space outside of the established hubs of knowledge, analysis, and judgment offers not only new insights into the dynamics at stake but challenges at the same time the idea that one perspective is rightly dominant. The chapter discusses how epistemic practices of seeing and judging (differently) are put at the service of justice considerations. This dynamic is relevant for the project of European Studies: the promise of approaching Europe “from the peripheries” consists in the promise of both seeking and finding a different Europe, a different idea of Europeanness.