Inverting the Telescope on Borders that Matter: Conversations in Café Europa

Abstract:

Proposing an ‘inverted telescope’ for border studies, we problematized existing calls to ‘see like a border’, arguing that such moves miss an opportunity to define what is properly political about b/ordering space. Inverting the telescope on borders that matter reveals an ontologically grounded politics of bordering, one that illuminates an inherent multiplicity to borders that can best be captured in those contact zones that resist our conventional understanding of where European borders lie. Focusing on localized bordering practices that contest demarcation and re-appropriation within the logics of global, European and state-centered geopolitical designs, we canvas the ontological politics emerging from the furnace of three spatio-temporal European horizons: the Istrian peninsula connecting Slovenia and Croatia; the historical, path-dependent trajectory of a seasonal labor force crossing Polish and Danish borders; and a ‘European’ border located deep in Amazonía. We name the space produced by the tensions in each of these theaters Café Europa, designating both a material location of border praxis as well as a collective intellectual project in which the authors are themselves self-reflexively implicated.