Abstract
This chapter opens with a rationale for analyzing the efficacy of borders through an examination of a range of cultural texts, asserting that much can be gained from such a focus even while acknowledging that the border is most starkly manifested at the material level of rules and strictures, exclusions and inclusions, and tariffs and trade. Performances and representations, it is suggested, remain some of the most effective ways in which the border functions, and they produce certain kinds of subjectivity, both when people accede to and navigate the material force of the border and when they oppose the legitimacy of this force. An analysis of two novels follows—Rabih Alemmedine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope and Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World. Both offer unflinching looks at the violence bred by borders and highlight the way capital, race, gender, and labor get marked, erased, and/or renewed in borderlands. These elements of crossing over are explored, and a critique is offered: both novels are limited at times by their focus on the individual’s ability to sublate and transcend border politics rather than on the possibility or necessity of abolition itself.