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While fidelity is a crucial aspect of Jacques Derrida's thinking as it pertains to issues of faith, ethics, and responsibility, this key position in deconstructionist discourse has hardly yet been brought to light. Less still have the biopolitical resonances of Derrida's work, with its careful attention to the terms and stakes of life particularly in his later writing, been considered as a deconstructionist practice of fidelity and infidelity in its own right. In pursuing these threads, this essay argues that thinking a deconstructionist ethics through fidelity and biopolitics makes possible the crafting of a new philosophical weave for catching our responsibilities to others – to the very otherness of life itself – that Derridean hospitality opens up. Taken together in this way, a deconstructionist fidelity to life otherwise, to a biopolitics to come, makes possible an infidelity to political order as we know it that explodes the limitations of biopolitical theory. In squinting, blinking, tearing up, and listening, the borders of life are blurred in an ambivalent ethics of a transness within which life itself is made to waver and arrive anew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented that focuses on the novel "Europe in Autumn," by Dave Hutchinson. Topics include his use of an imagined version of a fractured Europe with ever-changing national borders, the xenophobic tendencies of imagined communities, and mapmaking as a technology of border protection.

This article examines two German-language novels-Schlafgänger by Dorothee Elmiger and Gott ist nicht schüchtern by Olga Grjasnowa-to illuminate how the literary depiction of borders can contribute to a textured understanding of how borders function today. It draws on border studies, moving beyond a spatial framework to consider borders as territorial and non-territorial constructs. Elmiger's Schlafgänger adopts a wide perspective by profiling travellers with different credentials. Grjasnowa's novel, by contrast, is rooted in the European refugee reception crisis and focuses on displacement. By examining these two texts together, this article investigates the potential and limits of border narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Mexican author Nadia Villafuerte's 2005 collection of short stories Barcos en Houston examines what the Latin America Working Group calls Mexico's "forgotten border," i.e., its southern frontier. Revolving around the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, near Mexico's border with Guatemala, the stories portray the commodification of Central American women's bodies in the border town. This article reads Villafuerte's stories as a challenge to North-South, US-Mexico border dichotomies. Focusing on spaces like massage parlors, cantinas, and nightclubs, the stories present misery as the norm with stark realism. By representing rifts between sex workers from Mexico and those from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, Villafuerte offers a perspective on migration that has long been ignored in both US and Mexican letters: that of the South-South border. Police abuse abounds, as Mexican officials enforce a border logic that serves the US more than Mexico. I argue that Villafuerte's portrayal of racism and body commodification along Mexico's southern border reveals its status as a proxy border for the United States. After a long century of celebrated nationalist narratives, twenty-first-century Mexican authors like Villafuerte offer a critical perspective of Mexico's other spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Borderline" by Janette Turner Hospital is presented. It examines the book's issues of immigration in Canada, geopolitical boundaries, U.S.-Canadian/U.S.-Mexican border landscape with ensuing and overlapping contexts. It outlines the disruptive border thinking of the author on the topics including Canadian border with refugees from El Salvador, migration, and felicity.

This special issue discusses texts and cultural artefacts that defy the idea of Europe as a homogeneous and coherent construct, with a focus on north/south, East/West divisions. Starting from a series of case studies, the contributions address questions such as: Where does Europe begin and who establishes these boundaries? Who is considered European and who is not? How is difference described, represented and imagined in zones that are positioned within Europe, often at its core? What metaphors or narrative strategies are used to describe the other within Europe? Do writers from minority cultures participate in orientalized representations of their own culture? If orientalism can be conceptualized as the opposite of civilization, is it necessarily connected to notions of backwardness? If so, how does this play out in a European context? The range of the case studies considered in this issue is broad: chronologically, the essays span the nineteenth century to the present, and geographically they go from Russia to France, from Croatia and Hungary to Catalonia and the Basque countries. Overall, the essays take a transnational approach that considers ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences and notions of belonging within and beyond political units. A common ground is provided by recurrent critical concepts that offer a useful theoretical framework for discussion, such as Roberto Dainotto’s argument that Europe constructs itself not only in opposition to the non-Western, but also to its internal other, and Milica Bakić-Hayden’s notion of ‘nesting orientalism’: that is, the idea that countries who have been orientalized can also appropriate this discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The controversy about vaccines and autism presents an opportunity to explore how science is constructed in public debates about health and medicine. Rhetors who argue against a connection between vaccines and autism insist that their opponents are irrational, while rhetors arguing for a link insist that their fears are rational indeed. This analysis poses an alternative way of understanding the vaccines-autism controversy, suggesting that it is partly fueled by differing perceptions of the boundary between science and non-science. Using the concept of boundary work as a lens, this article uses generative rhetorical criticism to examine artifacts within the controversy and explores rhetorical constructions of scientific evidence, the forum of scientific discourse, scientific expertise, and the scientific capability. The findings suggest that rhetors’ awareness of disciplinary boundaries is just as important in the construction and reception of their arguments as their knowledge of scientific facts and principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the castle residence depicted of the Middle English Sir Degrevant as an example of a late fourteenth-century tower house and barmkin, a form of small-scale, castle architecture that emerged along the Anglo-Scottish border in direct response to English military incursions into Scotland, beginning in the late thirteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented of the early 19th century North American fictional books "Wacousta: Or, the Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas," by John Richardson and "The Pioneers," by James Fenimore Cooper. Particular focus is given to the books' depiction of Creoles in North American colonial frontiers.

The article presents literary criticism of the books "Bliss" by Ronit Matalon and "Snapshots" by Michal Govin. Particular focus is given to the treatment of national space, sovereignty, and borders in the novels. According to the author, Matalon and Govin offer an alternative model for the handling of Israel's Occupied Territories which has unique aesthetic, ethical, and gendered features.

A literary criticism is presented of the novel "Retrato de la Lozana Andaluza" by Spanish writer Francisco Delicado. Topics discussed include the depiction of Rome and its similarities to Andalusia, Spain in the novel, the use of dialogue in the novel, and literal and paratextual crossing of borders and boundaries by characters in the novel.

A literary criticism of the novels "Borderlands," by Gloria Anzaldua and "The Lacuna," by Barbara Kingsolver is presented. It examines the Gulf as a place of transformation in the novels, the reason behind the lack of scholarly debate on Kingsolver's novel, a comparison between the two novels in terms of interpreting the lacunas, their source of internal conflict which is the establishment of the border between the U.S. and Mexico and key elements in depicting Anzaldua's marginalized existence.

Three types of frontiers that may lead towards a single direction are investigated. There is the spatial frontier, apparently identifiable and material, which requires mediation of a historical construction. The textual frontier deals with theoretical developments on the theme and with the fictional production aiming at the land and its people. There is also the frontier between reality and the fantastic which frequently reveals aspects that are difficult to explain empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines post 1989 Polish literary production that addresses German-Polish history and border relations in the aftermath of World War II and participates in the German-Polish dialogue of reconciliation. I consider the methodological implications of border space and spatial memory for the analysis of mass displacements in the German-Polish border region with particular attention to spatiocultural interstitiality, deterritorialization, unhomeliness, and border identity. Focusing on two representative novels, Stefan Chwin's Death in Danzig and Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night, I argue that these authors' attention to geospatiality, border space, and displacement forms a distinct characteristic of Polish border narratives. Chwin's and Tokarczuk's construction of interstitial border spaces reflects a complex dynamic between place, historical memory, and self-identification while disrupting and challenging the unitary mythologies of the nation. With their fictional re-imagining of wartime and postwar German-Polish border region, these writers participate in the politics of collective memory of the border region and the construction and articulation of the Polish perspective that shapes the discourse of memory east of the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Borders and lines: seeing and imaging in Dylan', I expound on a contrast in Dylan's work between a passive, static imaging, and an active, ephemeral seeing. Drawing on three examples, 'Idiot Wind', 'Girl from the North Country' and 'Down the Highway', I show that, while each song is wary of the encapsulation of image, 'Idiot Wind' attempts, in Ginsberg's terms, to 'exorcise' it, while the earlier songs favour discontinuation, hence their economy. This also has ramifications for how Dylan depicts America. Relating the enclosure of the page to the enclosure of nation ('Borders and Lines'), I argue that Dylan typically resists such prescriptions, via an emphasis on seeing out, rather than in or over. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of Transit's representation of borders and mobility exposes the paradoxical and contradictory nature of national borders in twenty-first century Europe. This paper argues that Abdourahman Waberi's novel challenges and offers a nuanced response to the Hardt and Negri definition of Empire, exposing the postcolonial nomad's ''infinite possibility'' to be one of necessity, governed by class and social position. Specifically, the subaltern protagonist of Transit functions as ''border artist'' who subverts the regulatory machinery of the neocolonial nation state through acts of what I term ''nomadic elocution'' that unsettle statist border structures while simultaneously and paradoxically rearticulating them. I wager that Waberi's text demonstrates that in place of the global smoothness championed by Hardt and Negri, globalization structures itself through centers and peripheries that are deeply rooted in the nation state and a decidedly colonial calculus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the issue of whether contemporary Latin American literature can continue to be considered national literature. Through a look at the panorama of publishing in Spain and Latin America, it reflects on the fragmentation of the markets and its effect on the genres and styles of contemporary authors, and posits the appearance of a more individualized literary occupation that is less subject to considerations of national or regional identity. The article discusses the works of a wide range of Latin American authors from generations appearing between 1990 and 2010, marking its discussion within the context of observations of Roger Bartra and Jesús Martín-Barbero regarding the nationalist criticism such as ideology and the breakdown of the role of the nation as a transcendent totality. It also takes note that, together with the pro-government nationalism promoted by national states, an autonomous and individualist tendency has existed among writers, fruit of the modern tradition, which brings them to look for their own space at the margins of bourgeois society. The post-national authors of this day and age, the article notes, are characterized not so much by the desire to expand national borders but rather to reject them. [TRANSLATION]

The article discusses the prominence of coasts and borders in the novel "Ulysses" by James Joyce, with particular focus given to the concepts of nationalism, subjugation, and imperialism that arise from these themes. The cultural and political oppression of the Irish by the English as expressed through coastal control in the novel is also explored.

The article discusses the poetry collection "Neighbour Procedure" by Rachel Zolf, specifically how Zolf addresses conflicting phrase regimes and naming within the collection. The author notes how Zolf's work looks at borders and attempts to discredit their definition and restrictions. Also included is a discussion of borders in terms of morality and politics and an analysis of poetic spacing.

Modernity has been creating spaces, new boundaries and borders, as metaphysical, mythological and symbolic marks of physical and imaginary territories. Modern space and its borders are metaphors, boundaries that are created, walls that rise to identify with some and categorize others. In this short paper we want to approach the problem of the transformation of the idea of border (geographical, cultural, symbolic, etc.), for a reflection on the transformations of that civilized obsession called border. The border has always been a reference in facing the identities, names, symbols, different imaginary: it is more confrontational line between two otherness. From the previous framework, we reflect on Turnerian mythology, as we believe that behind the creation of the imagination of the northern border is the mythical vision of the American frontier as ideological canon that explains and confirms the presence of the white race in a border re-made in the image and likeness of the "American Dream". Frederick Turner's reflection on the role of the frontier in American history is not only the study of the importance of progress towards the West but -even more so, is the analysis of meaning that had the American frontier as a historical process that ended in 1893, as Turner said, but rather extended into the twentieth century and continues to constantly shaping the process of territorialization of the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kerstin Hensel's poetics of exaggeration, her representations of excess and the grotesque have been interpreted as highlighting practices of violence and marginalisation. In this article I consider Hensel's engagement in her 1994 novella, Tanz am Kanal, with margins and borders - subjective, topographical and aesthetic. I argue that her portrayal of Gabriela von Haßlau's excessive victimhood articulates a 'topography' of the traumatised subject, one that raises the question of border-security and -insecurity on several levels. A number of instances of shame and shaming in the novella show up the violence suffered by Gabriela as exceeding her borders both literally, in her bodily wounds, and metaphorically, in the mimetic encounters that inform her sense of self. Contrasting her characterisation with the border-secure (and for Ruth Leys 'anti-mimetic') subject of recent shame theory, I show here how Hensel's portrayal of this ashamed subject is integrally linked to her plotting of an urban topography. Her fictional flesh-city, Leibnitz, reflects in its excessive landscape the dissolution by violence of Gabriela's subjective 'surface'. While Hensel depicts a cityscape of disintegrating borders, this does not mean that structures of violence disintegrate with them. There are few spaces of resistance in Hensel's city, and Gabriela finds it difficult even to provide a testimony to her experience that is not bound up with the intervention of others. In this sense Hensel's account of violence surpasses even that of Giorgio Agamben's recent Holocaust testimony theory, thus posing an urgent challenge for situating her work within historical boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that, at present, there has been a loss of the "map" of identity references of Latin American literatura, which has been blurred national borders, resulting in the breakdown of a model of a writer and a restructuring of his role in society. For this reason, the author proposes that the study of the "floating territories" of this new literary cartography is not easy to place on the "flowchart" of the classical tradition of Latin American literature, which uis accustomed to divide by periods and countries, regardless of the "trans-territoriality" that current narrative presents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2007 South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun walked across the inter-Korean border for a summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Although adhering to the primordialist view of nationhood, this state-led border-crossing also indicates the effects of globalization. As the heavily militarized inter-Korean border is permeated by interaction between ethnic nationalism, the nation's anti-colonialist history, and the transnational forces, the image of border-crossing becomes a metaphor for a contested space of national unification. This article examines a selection of works by three contemporary South Korean playwrights who, from a post-nationalist perspective, have emerged to contest the contradictory aspects and trajectories of the past ten years of populist nationalism. Yoo Kim focuses on the ways these post-nationalist plays employ the motifs of border-crossing and borderland encounter to challenge the romantic and exclusionary narratives of the conventional nationalist theatre. Yoo Kim is an Associate Professor in English at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. His recent article, 'Mapping Utopia in the Post-Ideological Era: Lee Yun-taek's The Dummy Bride ', was published in Theatre Research International in 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is devoted to a survey of German and Austrian exile literature in Belgium from 1933 to 1945, a field that has been unexplored so far. Belgium happens to be quite a difficult case study, because of the provisional and transitory character of exile for writers attracted largely by the neighboring countries of France and the Netherlands. However, it is possible to organize a significant volume of materials outlining a topography of exile following, on the one hand, the geographical principle of settlement (Brussels, Antwerp, Ostende), and on the other hand, the principle of political networks (communist, "humanist"). Particular attention will be paid to the Austrian presence following the Anschluss in 1938, including not only Jean Améry but also the forgotten roman a clef of Hertha Ligeti, Die Sterne verlöschen nicht (1959). At another level the Belgian case, and especially Améry and Ligeti's works, will help contribute to a reflection on shifting identities and boundaries in literature of the exile in contrast to travel literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the experience of Cuban intellectuals during the 1980s in Cuba and later as exiles in Mexico. It discusses the creation of the Paideia cultural project in the 1980s in Habana, Cuba and comments on how it was dissolved. The author describes the exile of Cuban intellectuals and artists which took place from the end of the 1980s to the middle of the 1990s. He explores the variety of responses from these exiled intellectuals regarding the relationship between culture and politics in post-1992 and post-Soviet Cuba.

In the present work we propose the analysis of the most significant spaces that frame the characters performance. At the decisive request, Sophoclean heroes debate about their own limits, either ontological, moral or anthropological, which surely imply a jump, a step, or a crossroad. The space images show theatricality because of the impact they cause in the audience. They connote a manner of being or living, in a way that define the hero personality. We synthetically revise all the preserved plays of the tragic author and express the conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the hitherto neglected role of space in the pastoral, as distinct from place. The concept of 'pastoral space' (based on archaic world models) is developed and proposed as a template for various physical settings. This concept of 'pastoral space' is used to analyse four nineteenth-century Russian prose pastorals, focusing on the corrupting influence of boundary violation therein. Given the particular significance Russian culture accords to boundaries, this framework provides a fuller understanding of why Russian Arcadias are (as has often been observed but seldom explored) particularly prone to disintegration and self-destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author offers a brief survey of borders' function and functioning based on short stories by Gabrielle Roy. The author underlines how Roy departs from the traditional image of the protective border and confinement. She also tries to show how borders short-circuit time and space, and how the value of exchange, of bursting open to what is different, can be seen as a tool of self-assertion. Finally, the author touches briefly on the more philosophical aspect of the work of Roy.

Interviews Aritha van Herk, distinguished Canadian writer and critic, on her views about boundary and boundary crossing, particularly between the critical and the creative. Explanation on writers' faith and perspective observation about the various forms of poetry; Views on the conventions of essay; Manner of writing essay and her writing styles; Idea about the word ‘fictocriticism’.

This essay explores the role of story-telling in constructing Judah's border with the Philistines in the shephelah. Judah's struggle to control this frontier involved overcoming social pressures and incentives that naturally pulled Israelites and Philistines living in it toward integration and hybridization. The Samson story, the most famous biblical narrative associated with the shephelah, offers us an opportunity to reconstruct a possible role for story-telling in counteracting this pressure. Drawing on parallels with Greek myth, I argue that the Samson narrative does not merely reflect the ethnic and cultural ambiguities of the shephelah but seeks to assert control over them, doing so in ways that delegitimize Philistine claims to this region and stigmatize border-crossing. What we have in the Samson story, in other words, is an attempt to impose a fictional border between Judah and the Philistines in the shephelah, a border no less inhibitive for being imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides insights into the discussion of border negotiations in the works of Wolfgang Koeppen. Presentation of borders as a representation of both a division and a delineation of a space; Depiction of border in the books `Das Treibhaus,' `Unsern Ausgang segne, unsern Eingang Gleichrmaben' and `Eine ungluckliche Liebe.'

Focuses on the depiction of border and postcolonial feminism in the novel `Cracking India,' by Bapsi Sidhwa. Distinction between border work and border trouble; Plot of the novel; Ways of reading the text; Consequences of decolonization for women; Technique used to assert belonging; Problems faced by the text.

The article presents questions concerning the representation of national boundaries in the literary works of author Willa Cather. The perspectives of several of her biographers on whether Cather's allegiance to Canada and the U.S. are described. According to the article, in her fiction, Cather chose as heroines women who were outside conventional stereotypes of the time period. The border crossings of the character Alexander in the short story "Alexander's Bridge" are presented, and other works, such as the books "Shadows on the Rock" and "My Ántonia" are discussed.

Presents abstracts of articles on literary criticism appearing in 'Textual Practice' in 1998. 'The contemporary space of the border: Glora Anzaldua's Borderlands and William Gibson's Neuromancer,' by Kevin Concannon; 'Disgrace of revelation: I.B. Singer's Holocaust impiety,' by Josh Cohen; 'The political economy of Mansfield Park': Fanny Price and the Atlantic Working Class,' by Fraser Easton.

Examines present-day theories of border space and border writing. Etymology of the border as the limit of space; Complexity of border politics; Authors Gloria Anzaldua and William Gibson's writings on the border space.

The article focuses on the poetry of Chicana writer Pat Mora. The author explores how Mora's feminist beliefs impact her poetics, examines the literal and figurative meanings behind the use of borders within her poetry, and discusses her published collections of poetry, "Chants" and "Communion" and essays "Nepantla. Essays from the Land in the Middle."

Examines author Jack London's frontier narratives which situated northern Canada as an important wilderness region and a domain for United States nation-building enterprises. Advocacy of outdoor experiences as an element of modern life; Representation of the downfall of native rule; Championing the idealogy of continentalism.

Asks what should be done in a situation of border invasion, aggression, and general alarm. Language as a border of the body and mind; Articulation of the survival of writing; Writing in an antimimetic manner.