For an international network of the

The Instituto Maria e João Aleixo (IMJA) seeks to construct a movement to connect the world’s peripheries in a global network. We now present Peripheries Journal as a strategic tool in this construction. The conception and creation of this publication is a great challenge for the Instituto and editorial board. Grounding our thought and design in the concept of the Potency of the Peripheries and their subjects requires overcoming the barriers of academic meritocracy with an aesthetic plurality of narratives, uniting languages and forms of peripheral communication from countries all over the world. Publishing Peripheries in four languages —Portuguese, Spanish, French and English — is part of this effort.

The goal of Peripheries Journal is to gather researchers, activists, artists and residents of the world’s peripheries interested in sharing their diverse experiences. The theme and guiding premise of our debut edition is “The Paradigm of Potency and the Pedagogy of Coexistence.” Its guiding principle is the construction of new narratives to dispute the stigmatizing descriptions used to denigrate popular territories and their subjects. As a counter-argument, we use the word Potency in describing the inventive power of the peripheries: the capacity to generate practical and legitimate responses to unequal conditions, creating counter-hegemonic forms of life. We propose to discuss the Potency of the Peripheries as an affirmation of the right to democratic coexistence, emphasizing its plural forms and processes of political, cultural, aesthetic and social expression.

The Paradigm of Potency seeks to, by way of plural, attentive and decentralized knowledge production, construct new conceptions and narratives of the peripheries, their subjects and their dynamics, engaging in politics and disputing the project of the radical democratization of society.

In its first edition, Peripheries presents its opening article “The Paradigm of Potency and the Pedagogy of Coexistence;” an interview with Ailton Krenak, an important indigenous leader for Latin America; academic articles on Maré - Rio de Janeiro, Praia - Cabo Verde, Molenbeek - Brussels; a photographic essay from the Images of the People (Imagens do Povo) project; a testimony on prison life in Scotland, a graphic short story on mining activity in Goa - India; Maloqueirista Poetry from São Paulo, as well as book reviews and the “Letter from Maré - Manifest of the Peripheries,” translated into ten languages.

Join us in this movement for the world’s peripheries!