摘要
This essay considers borders as symbols of precarity and the possibility of re-framing them through boundary play. While borders were historically installed as military defenses they are now chiefly used to prevent and control migrants. My argument is against the either-or thinking that prevails in bordering and othering. Prominent social science perspectives are considered. By focusing on the semiotic phenomenological relations of homeland, homeworld, and lifeworld the possibilities of play at the boundaries of conscious experience are revealed. My disciplinary perspective is communicology, the human science of embodied discourse.
This essay considers borders as symbols of precarity and the possibility of re-framing them through boundary play. While borders were historically installed as military defenses they are now chiefly used to prevent and control migrants. My argument is against the either-or thinking that prevails in bordering and othering. Prominent social science perspectives are considered. By focusing on the semiotic phenomenological relations of homeland, homeworld, and lifeworld the possibilities of play at the boundaries of conscious experience are revealed. My disciplinary perspective is communicology, the human science of embodied discourse.