disrupting border thinking: borders beyond mapping.
Thinking the border as facts, marking “edges” of space, splitting space between State x and State y or as lines drawn on maps is typical. It is not your fault if you think of borders as “settled” structures; before embarking on this research I thought of borders in just the same way: as a singularity, dividing lines, solid, immovable, defining lines of national space, sovereignty or possession; or at least, I certainly did not think of borders as shifting and relational – as multiple, mobile and metaphysical.
Geographer John Agnew (1994, 2008, 2010) dubbed this “the territorial trap”. He unearthed a phenomenon describing how thought is limited by or “trapped by borders” – think: associations between borders with identity, territory, sovereignty and governmentality (2010, p. 779). Agnew was clear about the real-world impact of borders; he especially focused on the limitations that borders impose: “Borders matter, then, both because they have real effects and because they trap thinking about and acting in the world in territorial terms” (2008, p.176). Agnew’s call was for us to think – and then act – beyond those limitations.
In my research, building on this insight from Agnew – and following Cresswell (2010, 2015), Paasi (2012), Vacchiano (2013) and Mavelli (2018), I isolated four aspects of the regime of borders; this term acknowledges a perspective aimed at disrupting border thinking; the term itself is an acknowledgement of the epistemic, methodological and conceptual limitations that must be addressed as we research – that is think – borders .
This research finds the regime of borders divide physically, institutionally, cognitively and emotionally. Later, I will demonstrate how maps divide space in parallel ways; maps reflect and produce geographic and cultural “knowledge” – of course, often, reflecting the imperial gaze: epistemic perspectives and commitments embedded in that which is assumed to be “objective” or “natural”. My hope is to challenge dominant understandings of / around borders, to resist border thinking, especially my own. My wish is that in the future, together, we might find ways that borders can level rather than perpetuate inequalities.
deconstructing b/orders. 