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1 Borders That Travel Matters of the figural Border Kent A. Ono Unsurprisingly, national attention is once again focused on the US/Mexico border. Each time this happens (some might say, “Has this ever not happened ?”), historically minded scholars remind us this is a recurring state of affairs. not only is it the most crossed national border in the world,1 but at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and subsequently the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, Mexican nationals existed on both sides of the border.2 To this day, citizenship along the border is a blurry matter. if we stop to think about it, however, “border” is a hard word to define. Some see it primarily in terms of social regulation; hence the border is a “bounding, ordering” apparatus and construct (DeChaine, “Bordering the Civic imaginary” 44). As Rob DeChaine writes, “a border exists as a given entity whose contours can be cleanly and clearly recognized, measured, and mapped” (44). for him, its “primary function is to designate, produce, and/ or regulate the space of difference” (44). others remark on its physical materiality. As Shoshana Magnet has suggested , the US/Canada border is sometimes a strip of land, with actual areas that laborers have to maintain and protect from the seasonal elements— snow, rain, wind, and the like—constantly clearing a path in order to make the border visible (“Using Biometrics” 360, 365). So, especially when covered in blown and drifted snow, or when it is in water, where the border is, precisely, is often difficult to determine. So, for instance, at the US/Mexico border, geologists tell us the Rio Grande (like all rivers) changes course over time; with maturation, new rivulets appear, riverbeds erode, and overall the river becomes wider and possibly shallower. Eventually it may even disappear altogether. The meaning of the border is unclear even at the linguistic level. People use other words to define the border, each of them metaphorical, and therefore figural, such as “strip,” “edge,” “limit,” and “boundary.” Each of these terms has a different emphasis:“strip” implying three-dimensionality, “edge” denoting a dividing line between realms or that which cuts, a “limit” signifying a point not to go beyond, and a “boundary” meaning an enclosure or the outer extremity of a container. Depending on who uses which term, 20 / Ono one can impute to each one a general attitude toward and about the border, some more friendly to migration, others less so. for instance, Joseph nevins demonstrates how different terms imply different political positions regarding the border when he describes “a boundary as a strict line of separation between two (at least theoretically) distinct territories, a frontier as a forward zone of contact with the uncontrolled or sparsely-settled, and a border as an area of interaction and gradual division between two separate political entities” (8; emphasis in original). Depending on one’s stance, a border may mean a boundary needing to be crossed, or alternatively it might mean a dividing line that, if crossed, becomes an act of moral, ethical, and political trespass.3 Taking this logic further, John Sloop and i have suggested that what we say about the border shifts the border’s meaning, changes how it functions, and determines both its relative porosity and impermeability.4 Discourse makes phenomena meaningful, as Stuart Hall has so compellingly suggested.5 in the case of the border, discourse is intrinsic to its meaning and the uses to which it is put. furthermore, a definition of the border can convey more broadly attitudes and perceptions about social relations. in this chapter, i concentrate on defining the border figurally. i do this in order to extend humanistic thinking about the border, addressing the contingency of social and public matters—contingency being a traditional province of rhetoric—and thereby encouraging questioning and introspection about a matter of fundamental significance to our collective futures. More specifically, i am interested in the border not at the border or, rather, the border that travels. in his discussion of the ways the Southwestern United States is and is not exceptional with regard to neoliberal surveillance and control, Gilberto Rosas has suggested that processes that have historically been exceptional now are traveling to other locations in the United States. He writes, “The vast flows of largely Mexican immigrants across the United States perhaps cause the borderlands condition to likewise migrate, evidenced by two arrivals : the transnational immigrant social movement and the naturalization of anti-migrant paramilitary...

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