Border-as-Flesh: Towards a Theory of Border Reversibility
Journal: Theory & Event
Year: 2025

Abstract: This article theorizes the inability of state borders to implement the forms of separation they aim and claim to enact. To do so, it examines the geopolitical consequences of this failure by thinking the state border through a body of literature that critiques the notion of the body as a border between self and world. In particular, the article draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s articulation of the “flesh” to examine how the state border “intertwines” subjects and objects, allowing for t