Border Thinking Essay

A border can simply mean an edge or boundary of something or a line that indicates a boundary marking and separating one place from another. In a broader sense, border separates “one nation from another or a nation or, in the case of internal entities, a province or locality from another” (Martínez 1994: 5). As an edge or boundary of something, a border evokes a concrete meaning that one can easily picture. As a line separating two areas, the borders can be in the form of fences, walls, gates, or a natural border like rivers and desert. In this case, a border is understood as a divider, “a kind of physical demarcation allowing territorial divisions to be secured and marked on a map” (Cassarino 2006: 2). Within this definition, Malcolm Anderson

As there will be no border thinking without double consciousness, border thinking and double consciousness are like two-sides of a coin that can never be parted. One exists because of the other, and both complement each other. They also emphasize that double consciousness functions as a foundation of border thinking. This critique is especially well exemplified by Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera where she comes up with her new mestiza consciousness and proposes it, as an alternative offered to bridge the rigid binaries. The new mestiza consciousness is the middle ground, a third space invented to settle the contradicting binary in life. Like Mignolo and Tlostanova’s border thinking, always, a decolonial project, Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness also encourages us to un-learn what the previous subject-object perspective that has occupied the mind. Envisioning social justice, we can imagine how Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness will support and encourage people to adopt such concepts and realize a coalition building. A coalition depends upon a creation of a common culture and mutual knowledge. Without a common culture, people will have nothing to hold them together (Anzaldúa