Border Rules An Abolitionist Refusal

This book examines both border policies and oppositional narratives of “the border,” 2011–2021, demonstrating that the term designates not merely a line of territorial control but also a set of social relations shaped by persistent, racially differentiated colonial structures and, more recently, by neoliberal modes of accumulation. These relations are shown to determine access to wealth and/or resources and to enable the management of labor, the extraction of surplus, and the accumulation of capital. Discussion in the book is informed by the history of these policies and by the critical literature on borders. Various cultural texts focusing on two border zones—the US–Mexico and the EU–Southern Mediterranean—are analyzed: specifically, two novels, two films, and two murals examined in conjunction with amusic video. A path to a borderless future is suggested: an abolitionist refusal of border rules with an insistence on the necessity of abolition.

Chapter 1: Border Rules and Oppositional Currents.- Chapter 2: Border Rules: Imperialism, Race, and the Politics of Development.- Chapter 3: Theorizing Borders in the Shadow of Imperial Violence.- Chapter 4: Theorizing Borders in the Shadow of Imperial Violence.- Chapter 5: Documenting the Migrant Journey in Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow and Diego Quemada-Di´ez’s La Jaula de Oro.- Chapter 6: Visualizing Borders: M.I.A.’s “Borders” and Mural Art in Cuidad Juárez and El Paso.- Chapter 7: A Borderless World: Abolition Democracy and the Politics of Refusal Abolition and Solidarities Across Borders.

Kanishka Chowdhury is Professor of English and Director of the American Culture and Difference Program at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he teaches courses in cultural studies, transnational literatures, and contemporary film. His most recent book is Human Rights Discourse in the Post-9/11 Age (2019).