Syllabus

Short Course Description

This class aims at studying a wide variety of boundaries, moral, social, and political. My claim is that to understand political boundaries we need to look at the way we construct, apprehend, and conceptualize boundaries in other areas. We will look at the distinction between sacred and profane or between normal and abnormal; at the way we negotiate and revise boundaries (gender boundaries or boundaries of race, religion, or ethnicity); boundary-rituals and rites of passage; the boundaries of morality; and the boundaries between disciplines.
We intuitively think about boundaries as lines of separation (inside/outside, left/right, sacred/profane, black/white), as markers of disjunction. Some are visible and thick (such as walls), others are discreet and almost invisible (think of the inconspicuous differences between neighborhoods: you hardly notice them, neither on the map, nor on the ground, but they are distinctive). Boundaries also protect and grant rights: individuals are protected by their citizenship status, ?the right to have rights? as Arendt puts it (think of the hardships faced by refugees or stateless migrants).
However, while boundaries organize space and separate, boundaries also reflect what two entities have in common (?what color is the line of demarcation between a black spot and its white background??, asks C.S. Pierce). Boundaries connect (borderlands or contact zones), they are relationships. Boundaries are dynamic, flexible, contextual, and change over time (the boundaries of war zones have been revised, territories have been renegotiated). Boundaries are artefacts (think of African boundaries drawn by colonizers and ethnographers, or the straight lines of the US state boundaries: is the Mason-Dixon line a boundary? of what kind?), but they have specific social effects (ascription, exclusion, stigmatization). Boundaries can be crossed (but at what cost?).
In short, boundaries are spaces of encounter, they generate specific practices, and create ambiguous spaces. Art for instance is a marvelous example of boundary-blurring.
Political boundaries are hotly debated, and we will look at the justifications for closed versus open borders, specifically regarding democratic border-theory.
We will look at the essence of boundaries with philosophers; the utility of boundaries with sociologists and bible scholars; the deconstruction of our Western understanding of boundaries with anthropologists; we will try to understand spatial boundaries and segregation with scholars of urbanism and architects; track the multiplicity and plasticity of boundaries with cultural studies and post-colonialism; tear down the walls of classes with critical theory; and question political boundaries with scholars of liberalism, democracy, and justice.