Boundaries, borders and margins are related concepts and realities, and each of these can be conceptualised and organised in closed or open ways
with degrees of closure or openness.
The logics of stasis and closure, as well as cults of exclusivist and exclusionary sovereignty, are reflected and embodied in the closed xenophobic conceptualisation and organisation of boundaries, borders and margins. But, an open conceptualisation of the borderlands, where mixing and hybridity take place at a rapid, even dizzying, pace, gives rise to Creolisation
at the threshold of sovereignties, which can also be imagined. At present, our border zones are spaces of anxiety-ridden security arrangements, violence and death.
The existing politics of boundary maintenance is wedded to a cult of sovereignty at various levels, whichproduces bare lives, bodies and lands. We need the new art of border-crossing to be defined by the notion of camaraderie and shared sovereignties and non-sovereignties. Border zones can also be zones of meetings, communication, transcendence and festive celebration of the limits of our identities. Thus, we need a new art and politics of boundary transmutation, transformation and transcendence, in the broadest possible sense, that entails the production of spatial, scalar, somatic, cognitive, affective and spiritual transitions.
Edited by:
Ananta Kumar Giri,
Arnab Roy Chowdhury,
David Blake Willis
Imprint: Anthem Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 153mm,
Spine: 26mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781839986383
ISBN 10: 1839986387
Pages: 250
Publication Date: 05 November 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Preface; Towards a New Art of Border Crossing: An Introduction and an Invitation; Part One: Towards A New Art of Border Crossing: Reflective Horizons; Towards a New Art of Border Crossing; The New Art of Crossing Borders: Pandemic Disease, Climate Crises, and Epidemic Racism as Planetary Challenges; Fluid Identities and the Overcoming of Boundaries; Conjuring at the Margins: A Transcontinental Approach to Interpreting Border Art; Tagore’s Engagement with Border Crossing; Garrison, Thoreau, Gandhi: Transcending Borders; Comparare Philosophy Within and Without Borders; From Hegemony to Counter Hegemony: Border Crossing in Philosophical Discourse; Part Two: Towards a New Art of Border Crossing: Movements in Societies and Histories; Between the Left, the Liberal, and the Right: Postcolonialism, Subaltern Studies, and Political ‘Border Crossing’ in India; Directions: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and the Modern History of Migration; Crossing the German-German Border from the End of World War II until 1990: From Escape to Alienation; Overcoming the Borders in Southeast Asia? An Analysis of Trans-Border Collaboration in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region; Post Oil Migration Futures in the Khaleej: Thinking With/Out Borders; Transnational Communities and the Formation of Alternative Socio-Political Otherness; Part Three: Towards a New Art of Border Crossing: Religion, Politics, Art and Transcendence; Crossing Borders and Creolization: Creating and Negotiating New Worlds; The USA–Mexico Border in Film and the Subaltern Narrative of the Tohono O’odham Nation: The Politics of Documentary Films as a Medium for Change; High Tech for the External Border: Publicity Campaign and Text Based on the Script of a Radio Documentary; Journeys and Myths: Transcending Boundaries in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island; Transgressing Borders and Boundaries: Religion, Politics, and Art from the Pharaoh Khafra to the Work of Siona Benjamin; Transgression, Transcendence and Meaning Creation in Art: Mystico-Artistic Route for Re-enchanting the World
Ananta Kumar Giri is a professor (sociology and anthropology) at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Arnab Roy Chowdhury is an assistant professor (sociology) at the Higher School of Economics Moscow (HSE) University, Moscow, Russian Federation. David Blake Willis is a professor of anthropology and education at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California, USA.
Reviews for Toward a New Art of Border Crossing
“We humans have trouble with borders and border crossing—psychologically, socially, culturally, intellectually, artistically, economically, and politically as well as ecologically and geopolitically. This is the case in particular in twenty-first-century society faced, as it is, with multiple intertwined crises impacting every level. In this collection, 24 authors of diverse nationalities and disciplinary backgrounds probe this knotty problem relative to a variety of regions of the globe. Overall, their varied explorations amount to nothing less than a journey across borders, opening paths toward sustainable and humane survival. One comes away with an acute sense that the ideas of borders and border crossing matter—to us and the society in which we live right now.” —Piet Strydom, University College Cork, Ireland. “The study of boundaries—and how they are defined, negotiated, and maintained—has been a key focus of the humanities and social sciences from the very earliest of times. Towards a New Art of Crossing Borders elegantly combines past and present scholarship with case studies from across the world to shed new light and inject new urgency into a topic that has never been more important to understand than it is today.” —Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies and Warden, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. “I’ve been reading Ananta Kumar Giri’s works for over 20 years, and I have always been impressed both with the theoretical acumen and the breadth of contributors whom Giri has been able to draw to his works. Here again, Giri with the help of his co-editors David Blake Willis and Arnab Roy Chowdhury has pulled together what might seem like a motley crew of contributors from all over the disciplinary spectrum. Still, this collection of thinkers has found new and exciting ways to play with and within the ideas of borders—between disciplines, between cultural and philosophical traditions, and even with the notion that borders are supposed to separate people. Anyone interested in understanding the theoretical and ethical possibilities normally hidden in the border must read this collection voraciously.” —Scott Schaer, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. “I found all kinds of interesting and surprising insights in this text. All are grounded in the theory of the chapter authors. The innovation is how well many chapters weave in traditional thinkers with more thinkers from other traditions and even world views. This is a strength of the book. It is inter-civilizational in spirit. The result is a deeper engagement with border crossing itself as the inter-civilizational is an enactment of border crossing.” —Marcus Bussey, University of Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
