on edge?

July 13, 2024 4:24 AM

Once we move away from the idea that borders mark the edge of territory, we can see how immigration controls create divisions and hierarchies within individual nation-states [g: against borders]

The privatization and autocratic nature of the border industry underscores what artist-architect Frederick Hundertwasser [wiki] (often cited by Adbusters {previously}, which has long been committed to border abolition) once said: “The straight line is godless and immoral.” [International Center on Nonviolent Conflict]

(inspired by a recent post)

posted by HearHere (7 comments total)

The little I just read of the book gave me a lot to think about. Thank you for posting. I was hoping to find out the authors' thoughts on protection of marginalized groups and their culture, and how they tackle the hazards of heteronormativity, but I ran out of free viewing :) They do come at it from a human rights perspective, so I'm sure there is a proposed approach to it in there. As someone who has long (but not all her life) walked in various marginalized paths - Jewish, vegetarian, gay, trans - I've always had to live with the cognitive dissonance that most other people do not have the same perspective or challenges as me. I worry a lot about how we get from a world where we've carved out some safety and protection in a few countries to one where we can let the fences crumble and all of us can simply *be*.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:41 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]

Thank you for bringing in this material!

mumblemumble being the change re in-text citation

The first (Google Books) link leads to the introduction of "Against Borders: The Case for Abolition" by Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke de Noronha, Verso Books, July 2022, 9781839761959 [paperbook] / 9781839761973 [ebook]
posted by to wound the autumnal city at 7:33 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]

Oh gods, this is why people vote for conservatives even though conservatives are obvious jackasses. No, we are not abolishing borders, or the police, for that matter. This is how you lose easily winnable elections.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:55 AM on July 13 [3 favorites]

I mean... I guess I agree that conservatives will vote for keeping things as they were (of course not necessarily actually the way they were, but somewhere in the nostalgia/propaganda matrix).

But does that mean we never try to question things or improve systems? What I've read so far seems to be reasonable and worth considering!
posted by Acari at 8:30 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]

On this point:

conservatives will vote for keeping things as they were (of course not necessarily actually the way they were, but somewhere in the nostalgia/propaganda matrix).

I just recently finished Gerstle's The rise and fall of the neoliberal order, which I'm pretty sure I saw recommended here, and one of the points he makes is that there's nothing immutable about the identification of Democrats with progressivism, nor of Republicans with conservatism; that it was FDR who tried to ally the Democratic party with progressivism (of course, another Roosevelt was a progressive Republican, as contradictory as that sounds these days!); and that one of the many changes that we've witnessed in the collapse of the neoliberal order is the divorce of Republicanism from core concepts of conservatism. So, perhaps I'm being too US-centric here and the point was really about conservatives elsewhere, but anyway this helped me to understand that it's not just that modern Republicans don't understand the history of what they imagine they are conserving, but, rather, that they simply reject the classical ideal of conservativism, such as it is, entirely. Or probably that's too strong a statement, and Republican voters are not consciously engaging in any such rejection, but rather that those ideals need no longer even be paid lip service by Republican leaders, and can simply be disregarded in favor, by and large, of nationalism and religion, uh, ism—this latter part applying worldwide, not just in the US.
posted by It is regrettable that at 8:46 AM on July 13 [3 favorites]

does that mean we never try to question things or improve systems?
dictatorships... [sourcewatch]
*realizes question was rhetorical*
posted by HearHere at 9:10 AM on July 13

This video superficially about of Disney's Coco had a lengthy discussion of border controls and the very different experiences of people with different privileges and countries of origin.
posted by mscibing at 9:00 PM on July 14