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Toward a New Art of Border Crossing

Ananta Kumar Giri editor David Blake Willis editor Arnab Roy Chowdhury editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Anthem Press

Published:5th Nov '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Toward a New Art of Border Crossing cover

This book is anew and eye-opening study about border-crossing.This new art of border-crossing will be defined by the notion of camaraderie and shared sovereignties and non-sovereignties.

The new art of border-crossing is inspired by a new politics, art, and a spirituality of shared sovereignties and non-sovereignties.

Boundaries, borders and margins are related concepts and realities, and each of these can be conceptualized and organized 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 conceptualization and organization of boundaries, borders and margins. But, an open conceptualization of the borderlands, where mixing and hybridity take place at a rapid, even dizzying, pace, gives rise to Creolization—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, which produces 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.

“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

ISBN: 9781839986383

Dimensions: 229mm x 153mm x 23mm

Weight: 454g

326 pages