Theory of the Border
Thomas Nail
Abstract
Theory of the Border offers a new and unique theoretical framework for understanding one of the most central social phenomena of our time: borders. Contemporary life is bordered from all around and in every direction. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. Borders can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a t ... More
Theory of the Border offers a new and unique theoretical framework for understanding one of the most central social phenomena of our time: borders. Contemporary life is bordered from all around and in every direction. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. Borders can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of preestablished social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of (b)ordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework “kinopolitics” to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), his book pioneers a new methodology of “critical limology” that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.
Keywords:
border,
motion,
politics,
political theory,
kinopolitics,
space,
geography,
philosophy,
mobility
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190618643 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190618643.001.0001 |
