INTERIOR FRONTIERS

Abstract

Internal borders occupy ambiguous and obscure sorts of spaces. They may divide the “interior of a territory or empire,” “isolate,” and thus “individualize it,” and serve “as expressions of the very constitution of the subject.” “Interior frontiers” are malleable, situated and responsive, and have opaque power. The term itself, Balibar claims, embodies “the non-representable limit of every border, as it would be seen ‘from within’ its delineation.”