This study arises from two main argumentative moves. The first articulates the intertwining of two discourses, here described as development and the international, in the construction of a narrative about a precarious place of the periphery in the state system. The second, closely related to the first, investigates how the sign of the discursive subalternity of this peripheral place relates to a locus of enunciation called Brazil and how it helps to construct its foreign policy narratives or, specifically, its politics in face of the international. In order to put forward this objective, this research turns to the contemporary academic Brazilian foreign policy literature and also to the subject of Brazil’s international aspiration (LAFER, 2009; LIMA, 2004, 2005; LIMA; HIRST, 2006; PINHEIRO, 2000, 2004). Unlike most foreign policy analysis schools, which have been concerned, most of the time, with the more empirical and policy-oriented side of diplomacy, this work emphasizes the construction of a symbolic imagination that illuminates the very possibility of thinking strategically about Brazil’s insertion in the international scene. Based on several studies of post-colonial influence (BHABHA, 1998; CHAKRABARTY, 2000; INAYATULLAH; BLANEY, 2004), I argue that Brazil’s international aspiration emerges from a constant negotiation of the precariousness of its position in international politics. Ambivalence is finally introduced as a destabilizing force against the fixity of Brazil’s encounter with both development and the international and also as a way to resist the precariousness of its place of periphery.