Toward a New Art of Border Crossing
Boundaries, borders and margins are related concepts and realities, and each of these can be conceptualized and organized in closed or open ways—with degrees of closure or openness. The logics of stasis and closure, as well as cults of exclusivist and exclusionary sovereignty, are reflected and embodied in the closed xenophobic conceptualization and organization of boundaries, borders and margins. But, an open conceptualization of the borderlands, where mixing and hybridity take place at a rapid, even dizzying, pace, gives rise to Creolization—at the threshold of sovereignties, which can also be imagined. At present, our border zones are spaces of anxiety-ridden security arrangements, violence and death. The existing politics of boundary maintenance is wedded to a cult of sovereignty at various levels, which produces bare lives, bodies and lands. We need the new art of border-crossing to be defined by the notion of camaraderie and shared sovereignties and non-sovereignties. Border zones can also be zones of meetings, communication, transcendence and festive celebration of the limits of our identities. Thus, we need a new art and politics of boundary transmutation, transformation and transcendence, in the broadest possible sense, that entails the production of spatial, scalar, somatic, cognitive, affective and spiritual transitions.
Ananta Kumar Giri is a professor (sociology and anthropology) at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Arnab Roy Chowdhury is an assistant professor (sociology) at the Higher School of Economics Moscow (HSE) University, Moscow, Russian Federation.
David Blake Willis is a professor of anthropology and education at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California, USA.