Imagining the Border Otherwise: Global engagements with solidarity, relationality and survival

拟议的项目是一个原创和智力紧迫的项目，它解决了边界是否以及以何种方式超越其物质基础设施的问题。这是一部思想史，挖掘了四位基础思想家政治思想中的边界问题：格洛丽亚·安萨尔杜阿、坦苏拉·奥、让·热内和休伊·牛顿。就在国家边界激增并扩大其实施暴力的能力的同时，对它的抵制也在增加。通过越来越严厉的移民制度、扩大的监视设备、军事化的边境巡逻，与此同时，拥有广泛职权和警察权力的边防部队也在抵制政治现状和围绕民族国家构建的社会想象，这些国家旨在将一些人拒之门外，以保护那些在国内的人。被剥夺公民权的人，没有对国家和安全避难所的要求，被关在笼子里，随意拘留，并以“国家安全”和“边境神圣”的名义在海上挣扎。我们被告知这是人民的意愿，“人民”（大部分）被编码为白色、异性恋、守法的公民。人权律师、支持移民的非政府组织、难民委员会和研究过境点和使人们能够和形成流动的流动性政治的学者们仔细地记录了僵化的国家边界和支撑它们的安全制度所造成的伤害。虽然这种批评并不新鲜，但人们对陷入经常是专制政权和敌对或不欢迎国家之间战斗的交火中的人民的安全和福祉重新产生了兴趣。对于那些保护这些无法进入的人（即使他们在法律上拥有“权利”）以及这些人自己来说，国家边界意味着封锁，停止和暴力的场所。边境限制入境，在这个想象中，它是一长串针对逃离迫害、恐吓或没有希望的生活的无辜人民的罪行的罪魁祸首。开放国家边界成为解决这一问题的合乎逻辑的办法，有些人鼓动取消边界，认为这不仅是最激进的选择，也是最有用的选择。这个项目对边界怀疑论者和废奴主义者的许多主张表示同情，同时努力打开关于国家边界的对话，以审查其与种族资本主义其他技术的纠缠，尤其是私有财产和警务。将边境和边疆视为生成空间，教会我们关于边境想象的局限性，它邀请不同的观众（学者，从业者，政策制定者）停留在20世纪中叶四位作家的思想上，他们已经想象了一种不同的抵制方式，拒绝，以及与边境一起生存。四个积极分子：安萨尔杜阿、奥、热内和牛顿都对边界--主要是国家边界，但不仅仅是国家边界--以一种既具有破坏性又具有创造性的方式制约存在的多种方式提出了见解。通过他们的思想，思考边界，否则试图仔细浏览许多辩论和问题，使边界研究成为当今的学术领域，以及围绕安全，种族资本主义，私有财产和废除影响世界各地人民生活现实的监狱制度的性质进行更广泛的关注。它并不假装为我们共同存在的许多弊病提供快速解决办法，甚至是长期现成的解决办法，而是从前人所设想的未来的希望中寻求安慰。研究人员没有为失去这个潜在的未来而哀悼，而是建立在他们广阔的视野之上，认为另一个世界不仅是可能的，而且是必要的。

The proposed project is an original and intellectually urgent project that addresses the question of whether, and in what ways, the border matters beyond its physical infrastructure. It is an intellectual history that excavates the question of borders in the political thought of four foundational thinkers: Gloria Anzaldua, Temsula Ao, Jean Genet and Huey Newton.Just as the national border proliferates and expands its capacity to enact violence, so does resistance to it. The hardening of borders through ever more draconian immigration regimes, expanded surveillance apparatuses, militarized border patrols, and border guards with broad remits and police powers, has seen a concomitant push back against a political status quo and social imaginary structured around nation-states that are designed to keep some people out as a way protect those within. The people rendered outside the remit of citizenship, without a claim to the state and safe haven are locked up in cages, detained at will, and left to flounder on seas in the name of 'state security' and 'border sanctity'. This we are told is the will of the people, with the 'people' (largely) coded as white, heteronormative, law-abiding citizens. Human rights lawyers, migrant support NGOs, refugee councils, and scholars working on border-crossings and the politics of (im)mobility that enable and shape the movement of people have meticulously documented the harm caused by ossified national borders and the security regimes that underpin them. Whilst this critique is not new, there has been a renewed interest in the safety and well-being of people caught in the crossfires of the battle between often despotic regimes and hostile or unwelcoming states. For those defending these people without access (even if they legally have the 'rights') as well as for the people themselves, the national border signifies a site of blockage, stoppage, and violence. The border restricts entry, looming large in this imaginary as a, if not the, culprit in a long list of crimes against innocent people fleeing persecution, intimidation, or a life without hope. The opening up of national borders then becomes the logical solution to this state of affairs, with some agitating for border abolition as not merely the most radical but also the most utile option. This project is sympathetic to many of the claims of border sceptics and abolitionists, whilst at the same time striving to open out the conversation about the national border in order to examine its entanglements with other technologies of racial capitalism, not least private property and policing. Looking at borderlands and frontiers as generative spaces that teach us something about the limits of a border imaginary, it invites diverse audiences (academics, practitioners, policy makers) to tarry with the thought of four mid-twentieth century writers, who were already imagining a different way of resisting, rejecting, as well as surviving with the border. The four scholar-activists: Anzaldua, Ao, Genet, and Newton, all offer insights into the multiple ways in which borders - primarily national but not solely - condition existence in a manner that is at once disruptive and creative. Working with and through their thought, Thinking the Border Otherwise tries to carefully navigate the many debates and issues animating border studies as an academic field today, as well as engaging with wider concerns around the nature of security, racial capitalism, private property and the abolition of carceral systems that affect lived realities of people around the world. It does not pretend to offer a quick fix or even a long-term readymade solution to the many ills plaguing our common existence, but rather seeks solace in the promise of a future imagined by those that came before. Rather than mourn the loss of this potential future, the research builds on their expansive visions to argue that that another world is not just possible, it is also necessary.