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Abstract
Recent scholarship has pointed out the multidimensional character of national borders and the implausibility of the border as a single and coherent concept. In this article, I build on this scholarship as I discuss how geographers can critically engage in the dialectic of the border concept. To develop this argument, I review some of the existing literature on the concept of the border and cross-border migration and suggest that various material practices and meanings related to borders can be conceived of as “aspects” of the border concept. I argue that the impossibility of integrating these aspects into a coherent concept constitutes an important moment in the dialectic of the border. Critical geographers have an opportunity to engage with this border dialectic by offering meanings of borders that enable new possible border practices. I advocate a democratic aspect of the border concept decoupled from the state and implemented through a multitude of possible practices. I recognize that the consequences of such scholarly engagement in the border dialectic are not entirely foreseeable and therefore require continual reflection.
La erudición reciente destaca el carácter multidimensional de las fronteras nacionales y la poca plausibilidad de la frontera como concepto simple y coherente. En este artículo elaboro a partir de este punto de vista a medida que discuto sobre la manera como los geógrafos pueden comprometerse críticamente en la dialéctica del concepto de frontera. Para desarrollar este argumento, reviso alguna de la literatura existente sobre el concepto de frontera y sobre la migración transfronteriza, y sugiero que varias de las prácticas materiales y significados relacionados con fronteras pueden concebirse como “aspectos” del concepto genérico de frontera. Arguyo que la imposibilidad de integrar estos aspectos en un concepto coherente constituye un momento importante en la dialéctica de la frontera. Los geógrafos críticos tienen una oportunidad de comprometerse con esta dialéctica de frontera proponiendo significados de las fronteras que activen nuevas prácticas posibles en los límites. Yo propugno por un aspecto democrático del concepto de frontera, desligado del Estado e implementado a través de una miríada de posibles prácticas. Reconozco que las consecuencias de tal compromiso académico en la dialéctica de frontera no son del todo previsibles y por tanto demandan reflexión continua.
Notes
1. M. Anderson Citation(1996) used the term frontier rather than “border” to signify the flexibility of the concept (Newman Citation2006b).
2. Althusser and Balibar ([1968] 2006) borrowed the term overdetermined from psychoanalysis to conceptualize multiple causality. Their translator Ben Brewster (2006, 315–16) explained that “the overdeterminiation of a contradiction is the reflection in it of its conditions of existence within the complex whole, that is, of the other contradictions in the complex whole.” Balibar used the term in a similar way in the context of the border concept. I thank one of the reviewers for drawing my attention to this point.
3. In his earlier work, Wittgenstein (1989, 3.326, my translation) said, “To recognize the symbol in the sign, one must pay attention to the meaningful use.”
4. I do not claim that my discussion of this example represents an inclusive list of all aspects of this border. Rather than pursuing the impossible aim of producing a complete catalog of fixed meanings of the border, my objective is to illustrate how coexisting border aspects define particular relationships between material practice and meaning.
5. From a Marxist perspective, this rights-based liberalism is an ideological superstructure that affirms the capitalist mode of production. The bordered liberal state can be interpreted as a product of bourgeois interests (Hobsbawn Citation1992, 38–40; Habermas 1996).
6. Neoclassical economists concur that borders create harmful labor mobility restrictions that disrupt the free circulation of human capital (Hamilton and Whalley Citation1984).
7. Hegel ([1807] 2005, 98) used the example of the concept of salt, which is defined by simultaneously being “white and sharp and cubic and of a particular mass, etc.”
8. In Adorno's (1963, 151) words, the “catastrophe” of insisting on the border concept provides this moment.
9. Or, in other words, “In contrast to the German [i.e. Hegelian] philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here one ascends from earth to heaven” (Marx and Engels Citation1953, 22, my translation).
10. These differences between Hegel and Marx are perhaps best expressed by two famous quotes by both individuals. Hegel ([1820] 1970, 59–60) poetically expressed his conviction that philosophy has no role in actively shaping history in the following way: “When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then a configuration of life has grown old, and cannot be rejuvenated by this grey in grey, but only understood; the Owl of Minerva takes flight only as dusk begins to fall.” Conversely, Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach expresses the responsibility of scholarship to engage in the material processes: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
11. Samers Citation(2003) brought this quote to my attention.
12. Wittgenstein's (1994, 229, my translation) statement that “the aspect is subordinated to the will” resonates with this assessment (see also Wittgenstein [1945/1946] 2001, 1058 [Part II, xiv]).
13. Gregory (2004, 18), for example, shows how, in a similar way, “Protean power” has relied on the production of imaginative geographies that shape “the practices of those who draw upon it, actively constituting its object,” in this case the “Orient.”
14. To resort back to a comparison with Wittgenstein and his example of the rabbit–duck head, a rabbit and a duck have indeed little in common other than being represented by the same sign.
15. Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 95) asserted that for Hegel “identity is never positive and closed in itself, but is constituted as transition, relation, difference. If, however, Hegel's logical relations become contingent transitions, the connections between them cannot be fixed as moments of an underlying or sutured totality. This means they are articulations.” For Laclau and Mouffe (1985) this articulation is a discursive practice that involves the entire realm of human action, including critical scholarship.
16. Even the mere visual contour of a state border can function as a “logo” (B. Anderson 1991, 175) that evokes national pride and patriotism.
17. Interestingly, although migrants might be subordinated and excluded from democratic participation, a condition of equality exists in that they are recognized as being different and thus capable of dissent. Ranciere (1999, 2004) explained that difference between groups is only possible under the condition of sameness. For example, the slave must be able to understand an order by the master and obey it, which requires an equality of understanding.
