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Salzburg Global Fellow Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo explores how words can reshape geopolitical and epistemic boundaries

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This op-ed was written by Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo, who attended the Salzburg Global American Studies program "Beyond the Nation-State? Borders, Boundaries, and the Future of Democratic Pluralism" from September 19 to 23, 2023.

The border, the fence, the wall, the line,"herida abierta", the open wound... There are so many ways to refer to the geopolitical boundary as a mechanism that divides and separates; there are many different ways of looking at it, depending on which side one is standing on, and perhaps more importantly, on who the crosser is. An insurmountable barrier or just an easy pass, the line seems to have the ability to mutate right under one’s gaze. Yet, and as a caveat, it is essential to establish that whatever particular perspective we assume cannot distract us from the fact that people die trying to cross to the other side every day, be it in the Mexican-American borderlands, the liquid line that separates Africa from Europe, or one of the many other instances.

But the boundary is not only the geopolitical line, that presumably clearly demarcated contour that separates one country from another, this side from that side, here from there, order from chaos, law from lawlessness, and citizen from “illegal alien”; this open series reminds us that "order" is part of the word "border". Those clearly defined lines that we see on maps cannot equivocate us into believing that once you are on the other side, you are in. As Etienne Balibar says, the border is no longer, or rather, not only, at the border. The reason is that the border is much more than a traceable boundary. As an epistemic tool, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson claim that the border structures the way we look at the “Other”, at whoever does not look, sound, or speak like us. The border creates meaning as it separates, labels, and transforms people into categories that depersonalize individuals. The power of this classification is clear in Mary Pat Brady’s words, as the border “functions as more than a site, a metaphor, a location, an image, or a fantasy”. For Brady, the border mechanism resembles an abjection machine that carries out its own border “alchemy” as it transforms people into “‘aliens,’ ‘illegals,’ ‘wetbacks,’ or ‘undocumented,’ thereby rendering them unintelligible (and unintelligent), ontologically impossible, outside the real and the human”.

Amid these geopolitical and epistemic structures that allocate individuals, cultures, and languages to particular groups, sides, locales, warehouses, detention centers, or camps, the issue is what role literature and culture can play. Words have proven their incantatory power in creating catchy phrases such as “build the wall”. As Jessy Bloom claimed in another context, “we embrace stories that have simple plots, good and bad characters” and the “build the wall” refrain provides limits, definitions, clearcut divisions, and alliances. As integral parts of our political imaginary, walls and boundaries are not just state artifacts but also potent symbols, claim Reece Jones and Corey Johnson. Yet, words can also allow us to see other bodies and hear other voices and languages. Words and images may have the ability to dismantle the order of the border, not only as it creates meaning for those on the other side of the boundary, but also as it resignifies us, on this side, in relation to that separation. Words can also create “hope spaces”, places that are not partitioned by the border or by any other epistemological attempts at “creating” different orders that are reminiscent of the same old structures of meaning.

One of the most eloquent ways of illustrating what literature and culture can do has been expressed by Toni Morrison in an interview: “I stood at the border, stood at the edge, and claimed it as central. And let the rest of the world move over to where I was.” That is the hope, that just as words create narratives that separate and discriminate, they can also create instances for exchange, understanding, and for putting ourselves in the place of whoever is on the other side.

Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo is a professor of American literature and culture at Universidad de Salamanca. Her publications have appeared in journals such as South Atlantic Quarterly, Journal of Modern Literature, Canadian Literature, and publishers such as MLA, Cambridge UP, Brill, Oxford UP and Peter Lang.

Ana attended the Salzburg Global American Studies program on “Beyond the Nation-State? Borders, Boundaries, and the Future of Democratic Pluralism” from September 19-23, 2023. The 2023 Salzburg Global American Studies Program focused on the contestations and renegotiations of boundaries beyond the nation-state, and how they are changing the representation of democratic pluralism.