Writing Borders and Other Barriers in the Era of Climate Crisis: Communities of Engagement

Abstract

Understanding walls, borders, and barriers, not only as physical but also as ontological entities, the essays in this volume explore how they emerge and transform across different geo- and biopolitical contexts. Embarking from intersectional standpoints, and through ecocritical, postcolonial and decolonial lens, inter alia, the essays in this volume explore the power of nationalist ideas that promote borders and the ways through which activists and artists work to challenge, combat, or break them down, often using utopian ideas of post-nationalism or transnationalism. The significance of borders also becomes emphasized in relation to the climate crisis, since climate change also literally alters the physical geography of borders, undermining vulnerable communities worldwide as well as creating schisms between political and economic groups. The malleability of such borders, the threat to them from denier ideology and the vulnerability of those living in these liminal spaces are also key themes in this collection, similarly to the contestation of ideological as well as natural borders and other barriers. Intersectional explorations of these themes include but are not limited to perspectives that focus on race, gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, which have gained new relevance in the international context of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo activism. Environmental Humanities perspectives are also core in this collection in terms of shedding light on the gathering catastrophe that these border strains presage.