Lecture – The political agency of terrain in bordering
Lecture – The political agency of terrain in bordering
This lecture explores the conception of borders as a process co-constituted by the entanglement and interaction of multiple material entities, whether human or non-human. This perspective differs from the deterministic understanding of “natural borders”, as well as from the understanding of borders (and its materialization) as socially constructed and produced. Through examples from the Mexico-United States border, the focus will be on to demonstrate the capacity of terrain (or the geosphere) to affect human bodies, territories, and bordering mechanism.
12 February 2025, 4.00-5.30pm
Online lecture (WebEx)
Lecture in English
Xavier Oliveras-González is researcher and professor at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Matamoros, Mexico since 2013. Recently, his work has focused on the materiality of borders from a post-humanist and new materialist perspective. Between 2015 and 2019, he led a postgraduate program in border studies. Currently, he serves as the 2nd Vice-President of the Association for Borderlands Studies.
The lecture is part of the UniGR-CBS lecture series “Border Realities: Beyond Nature and Culture”
The series is organized by Lola Aubry (UniGR-CBS, University of Luxembourg) and Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary (Pacte, CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes).
