Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics

One: Reflections on Border Theory, Culture, and the Nation

ONE Reflections on Border Theory, Culture, and the Nation Alejandro Lugo border n 1: an outer part or edge 2: BOUNDARY, FRONTIER. .. 4: an ornamental design at the edge of a fabric or rug Syn BORDER, MARGIN, VERGE, EDGE, RIM, BRIM, BRINK borderland n la: territory at or near a border: FRONTIER b: an outlying region borderline n: a line of demarcation bordure n:a border surrounding a heraldic shield Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary frontera (de frontero.) f. Confin de un Estado [Limit of a state] 2. Fachada [ornamental design]... 5. Limite fronteria (de frontero) f.ant. Frontera; hacerfrente [To confront] frontero, ra Puesto y colocado enfrente [Situated in front] Diccionario de la Lengua Espanola Heterotopia: disorder in which fragments of a large number of possible orders glitter separately in the dimension, without law or geometry, of the heteroclite in such a state, things are laid, placed, arranged in sites so very different from one another that it is impossible to find a place of residence for them. MICHEL FOUCAULT, The Order of Things We live in a time and space in which borders, both literal and figurative, exist everywhere A border maps limits; it keeps people in and out of an area; it marks the ending of a safe zone and the beginning of an unsafe zone. To confront a border and, more so, to cross a border presumes great risk. In general people fear and are afraid to cross borders People cling to the dream of Utopia and fail to recognize that they create and live in heterotopia. ALEJANDRO MORALES,"Dynamic Identities in Heterotopia" 43 44 Alejandro Lugo The Borders of Border Theory If we wanted to carry out an archaeology of border theory, how would we identify its sources and its targets?Where would we locate its multi­ ple sites of production and consumption, formation andtransformation? What are the multiple discourses producing images of borders almost everywhere, at least in the minds of academics? In trying to answer these questions, more with an exploratory spirit than with a definitive one, let us saythat the sites, the sources, the targets, and the discourses can be variably characterized by the following:previously marginalized intellectuals within the academy (i.e., women and other minorities), the outer limits of the nation­state (i.e., the U.S.­Mexico border region), the frontiers of culture theory (i.e., cultural borderlands vis­a­vis cul­ tural patterns), the multiple fronts of struggle in cultural studies (i.e, the war of position), the cutting edge (at the forefront) of theories of difference (i.e., race, class, gender, and sexual orientation), and finally (at) the crossroads of history, literature, anthropology, and sociology (i.e., cultural studies). In this essayI argue that in order to understand its political and prac­ tical importance, we must reimagine border theory in the realm of the inescapable, mountainous terrains of Power (Foucault, 1978) as it has operated in the past two hundred years in the West (Foucault, 1978; Derrida, 1966),and as it has been imbricated in the academy, in culture theory, in the global contexts of late capitalism, and in the last analysis, and perhaps most important, in the realms of the changing "nation" (Anderson, 1991) and "state" (Hall, 1986).1 This privileging of the "nation/state," on my part, relates to a current theoretical and political concern that has practical implications for the opening of more inclusive spaces under globalization, especiallyfor the coming twenty­first century: the deterritorialization of the nation, poli­ tics, culture and border theory, and, finally, human agency (Ong,1995; Morales, 1996; Martin­Rodriguez, 1996).For Alejandro Morales, "Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia explains border culture," and "life in the chaos of heterotopia is a perpetual act of self­definition gradually deterritorializing the individual" (1996,23,24). Regarding feminist prac­ tice in the global setting, Aihwa Ong argues that "diasporic feminists Reflections on Border Theory 45 (and we should all be somewhat mobile to be vigilant) should develop a denationalized and deterritorialized set of cultural practices. These would have to deal with the tough questions of gender oppression not only in that 'other place'.. .but also in one's own family, community, culture, religion, race, and nation" (1995, 367). Finally, just as Manuel Martin­Rodriguez, following Deleuze and Guattari, argues that a "mi­ nor language" can erode a "major language from within," I argue that the border region and border theory...