Between the Left, the Liberal, And The Right:: Post-Colonialism, Subaltern Studies, And Political ‘Border Crossing’ In India

Ch. 9. P. 125–138.

Roy Chowdhury A.

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.

Keywords: India, Borderland, political discourse, South Asia, participation in politics

In book

Toward a New Art of Border Crossing

L.: Anthem Press, 2024.