Boats, Borders and the Geo-Imaginaries of the South

Maravillas, F

Boats, Borders and the Geo-Imaginaries of the South

Maravillas, F

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Publisher:: UTSePress, Sydney
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2013, 10 (1), pp. 1 - 22
Issue Date:: 2013-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Maravillas, F	en_US
dc.date.issued	2013-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2013, 10 (1), pp. 1 - 22	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1449-2490	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/26427
dc.description.abstract	This paper activates a mode of spatial inquiry into Australia's identity through an analysis of a number of frames through which the passage and interdiction of boats off the coast of the nation may be viewed. By focusing on contemporary artistic representations and practices that explore the various ways this mediatized spectacle may be apprehended and understood, I show how these frames foreground a distinct set of transnational relationalities shaped by the tensions between Australia's history and its geography. In particular, I examine the way in which Australia's peculiar and paradoxical geographical location as South of both the West and Asia play a key role in affixing the horizon within which a conception of the nation and its relationship with the world was - and continues to be - defined and shaped. Significantly, I not only critically probe the constitutive fears and anxieties that underlie bounded conceptions of the trope of the South, but also examine how such a trope can articulate itself as a site of exchange and negotiation, a distinctive borderland that engenders new cartographies of difference and belonging in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world. I argue that these frames overlap and converge on the wider questions of space, place and identity at the very moment when the process of globalisation and migration has done so much to shake any certainties about Australia's identity as a geographically distinct and spatially bounded nation-state. In so doing, they represent crucial sites for articulating and enacting a transcultural politics of mobility and spatiality that attends to the ways in which the trope of the South may been imagined not as a sphere of containment or an enclaved territory, but as an evolving cartography, the shifting outlines of which opens up new horizons of possibility for rethinking the spatial and temporal coordinates of Australia in a globalizing world.	en_US
dc.publisher	UTSePress, Sydney	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies	en_US
dc.title	Boats, Borders and the Geo-Imaginaries of the South	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	1	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	10	en_US
utslib.for	2002 Cultural Studies	en_US
utslib.for	2005 Literary Studies	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/e-Press
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
utslib.copyright.status	open_access
pubs.consider-herdc	true	en_US
pubs.issue	1	en_US
pubs.volume	10	en_US

Abstract:

This paper activates a mode of spatial inquiry into Australia's identity through an analysis of a number of frames through which the passage and interdiction of boats off the coast of the nation may be viewed. By focusing on contemporary artistic representations and practices that explore the various ways this mediatized spectacle may be apprehended and understood, I show how these frames foreground a distinct set of transnational relationalities shaped by the tensions between Australia's history and its geography. In particular, I examine the way in which Australia's peculiar and paradoxical geographical location as South of both the West and Asia play a key role in affixing the horizon within which a conception of the nation and its relationship with the world was - and continues to be - defined and shaped. Significantly, I not only critically probe the constitutive fears and anxieties that underlie bounded conceptions of the trope of the South, but also examine how such a trope can articulate itself as a site of exchange and negotiation, a distinctive borderland that engenders new cartographies of difference and belonging in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world. I argue that these frames overlap and converge on the wider questions of space, place and identity at the very moment when the process of globalisation and migration has done so much to shake any certainties about Australia's identity as a geographically distinct and spatially bounded nation-state. In so doing, they represent crucial sites for articulating and enacting a transcultural politics of mobility and spatiality that attends to the ways in which the trope of the South may been imagined not as a sphere of containment or an enclaved territory, but as an evolving cartography, the shifting outlines of which opens up new horizons of possibility for rethinking the spatial and temporal coordinates of Australia in a globalizing world.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/26427