{"id":1523,"date":"2024-10-14T20:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imaginedtheatres.com\/?post_type=issue&p=1523"},"modified":"2025-07-03T11:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:41:20","slug":"borders","status":"publish","type":"issue","link":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/borders\/","title":{"rendered":"Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BORDERS (Part I)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

b<\/strong>orderS<\/em>, or,\u00a0Imagined Theatres<\/em>\u00a0contra \u201cimagined theatres\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this ever-lengthening period of manufactured crisis relative\u00a0to\u00a0the Mexico-US border, \u201cb<\/strong>orderS<\/em>\u201d focuses on borderlands, expansively defined. Ten contributions in Spanishes, Englishes, and Spanglishes paired with ten glosses in a comparable translanguaging range, assume the form\/s and shape\/s of the sonic, the visual, the written\u2026 y m\u00e1s! Somewhere midway through the editorial process, one of us accidentally inserted into the mix a typographical error (otherwise known as the \u201cfeminist glitch\u201d): a capitalized and italicized \u201cS<\/em>\u201d in \u201cb<\/strong>orderS<\/em>.\u201d In hindsight, we recognize this \u201cS<\/em>\u201d as generative because the other, accepting the typo at face value, ran with it as an organizing principle for the entire volume. (Alternately, we cannot forget the bold little \u201cb<\/strong>\u201d of the same fortuitous \u201cerrorism,\u201d rounding out a critique of the \u201cb<\/strong>.S<\/em>.\u201d of \u201corder\u201d in \u201cb<\/strong>orderS<\/em>\u201d per the rhetoric of enclosure and containment.)<\/p>\n

Hear the re-alliteration of plurality: Here the S <\/em>is \u201ctransfronterizomatice\/x\/a\/o\u201d per the neologism of Omar Pimienta and the b <\/em><\/strong>of IVF birthing and the S<\/em> of the b<\/em>ending river of Rachel Price\u2019s locative d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu; the S<\/em> of Alaric L\u00f3pez\u2019s storied silence and pintura-de-acci\u00f3n poetics and Perry V\u00e1zquez\u2019s surround-sound analysis replete with Sam Shepard citations ( \u201cTexas, Our Texas\u201d\u2026 \u201call hail the mighty state\u201d re-becoming \u201cTexas, Poor Texas\u201d\u2026 \u201call failed, right-wing state\u201d); the S<\/em> and b<\/strong> of sacred snakes unboxing the desert in Isidro P\u00e9rez-Garc\u00eda\u2019s lucha libre and Daniela Lieja Quintanar\u2019s spirited sporting captions; the S<\/em> and b<\/strong> of Rosal\u00eda Romero\u2019s attentions to the SSSSSS<\/em> of ICE shavings and the drone of echo<\/em>location and Grant Kester\u2019s appositive short survey of aesthetic (judgment) and the accessory apropos of the b<\/strong>orderization built into b<\/strong>inaries; the S<\/em>-n-b<\/strong> of Cognate Collective\u2019s and Susan Briante\u2019s cr\u00f3nicas and cut-ups of complicity and solidarity (note, if Kamala Harris loves Venn diagrams, we applaud the \u201camalgamation waltz\u201d of these contributors\u2019 planetary kinship diagrams); the operatic S<\/em> of colliding space stones in Lorena Mostajo\u2019s and Pepe Rojo\u2019s call-and-response meteor shower; the S<\/em> and b<\/strong> of robyko \u221e’s \u201cFour Border S<\/em>tates\u201d and Brandon Som\u2019s ekphrastic haibun enacting permutations of ecstatic transubstantiation; the S<\/em> of Sa\u00fal Vargas Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s meditations on a 19th<\/sup> century image, an obelisk\u2019s placement or removal, marking the b<\/strong>eginnings or endings of a Border versus Nadia Villafuerte\u2019s return to a source, the equally provocative proposition that the obelisk was never in fact an obelisk, but a stone and ritual in concert with not only Vargas Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s contribution but robyko \u221e\u2019s, Mostajo\u2019s, and Rojo\u2019s; the S<\/em> and b<\/strong> of father-daughter solidarity and separation in Maribel Bello\u2019s scripted erasures as critical embrace and distancing vis-\u00e0-vis Desir\u00e9e Mart\u00edn\u2019s analysis of \u201cirregularidad\u201d as a \u201cliteral condition that never has the privilege of metaphor;\u201d and finally\u2014as in last, but not least\u2014the S <\/em>of Sebasti\u00e1n, the patron saint of Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, reuniting with the X of a fire, a map, a train\u2019s path, a scar\u2026 in Zazil Collins\u2019s prose poems merging into the S<\/em>oundcloud and Ala\u00edde Ventura Medina\u2019s paired Spanish-English aphorisms that highlight inequities in truisms normalized for the everyday.<\/p>\n

The atomic facts of the post-1848 Mexico-US border are entangled, but inconsistent hasta la nivel nano<\/em>; discursive threads; like shifting lines that live-stream disputes over water, land, sky management, bio- and necropower (\u201cHow the West was won\u201d times \u201cthe barbaric North\u201d), the pastoral, raised to the power of two, three\u2026 ad infinitum<\/em> (a performative Matrix that assaults our matrices). Consider the sharp uptick in violence, consistent with transitional periods following Mexican Presidential elections, exacerbated by another forced transition in leadership\u2014the July 2024 arrest of the \u201ccapo de los capos,\u201d Ismael \u201cEl Mayo\u201d Zambada. Electing a woman president, while historically significant, saves no one when the goal of \u201csalvation\u201d is from-the-jump problematic and when the highest common denominator of all political parties across the MX-US subcontinent continues to be that of corruption. Cue up AMLO\u2019s passing-of-the-peso-and-torch as he simultaneously casts blame on the US for the latest narco-power vacuum and cedes the stage to his MORENA prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Claudia Sheinbaum. Reckon with his administration and coalition\u2019s contradictory impulses (e.g., an unwavering support for the working poor, dismantling of cultural sectors, callous disregard of feminicide spikes, and funding of the unnatural disaster of the Tren Maya). Consider the 2024 US Presidential election where Democrats and Republicans alike mobilize the \u201cimagined theatres\u201d of \u201cBorder\u201d with a big \u201cB,\u201d presupposing \u201creconquest\u201d and the hyper-need to seal off un\/authorized routes and ports of entry. Sit for a moment with Kamala Harris\u2019s pick-up truck-tough home(land) security rhetoric, \u201cIf someone breaks into my home, they\u2019re going to get shot.\u201d Drill down on Project 2025\u2019s fabulist propositions for and on immigration policy, authored by America First Legal, an extremist, xenophobic cabal led by white nationalist, former Trump Administration advisor, Stephen Miller\u2014the mastermind behind the US\u2019s latest mass deportation scheme. Project 2025 outlines a \u201cfinal solution\u201d to a fabricated problem, arguing for \u201cbig government\u201d to bring in the National Guard, state and local police, other federal agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military to bunker the border. In this theater of war\u2014a hall of mirrors\u2014deportation forces, spooked by their own likenesses, would infiltrate cities and neighborhoods, going door-to-door and business-to-business in search of unauthorized residents in keeping with a policy promoted to lift prohibitions on ICE busting into so-called \u201csensitive zones\u201d like schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.<\/p>\n

This special issue\u2014b<\/strong>orderS<\/em>\u2014in deliberate contrast, taps into radically distinct traditions and languages that cannot be pacified; that refuse to soldier on; that transmit messages against and beyond hetero-masculinist and homo-nationalist militarized-industrialized outer-range complexes. Tune in, read on, keep scrolling (get excited for Part II!): While the aesthetic, rhyming with the political per Walter Benjamin\u2019s theses, is frequently a formula for authoritarianism; it\u2019s also sometimes the very pharmakon we need, the paragon of Derrida\u2019s parergon, the frame of the border, always-already undone, unmade, undocumentary, blessedly un-One.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amy Sara Carroll and Ricardo Dominguez\u00a0<\/p>\n

Co-Editors, Issue 08: Borders<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this ever-lengthening period of manufactured crisis relative\u00a0to\u00a0the Mexico-US border, borderS focuses on borderlands, expansively defined. Ten contributions in Spanishes, Englishes, and Spanglishes paired with ten glosses in a comparable translanguaging range, assume the form\/s and shape\/s of the sonic, the visual, the written\u2026 y m\u00e1s!","protected":false},"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/issues\/1523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/issues"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}