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Liminal Places and Non-Places

  • Sandro Gorgone
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Mind the Gap: Borders, Limits and Frontiers
This chapter is in the book Mind the Gap: Borders, Limits and Frontiers

Abstract

The paper analyses the relationship between place and border. I begin by considering the meaning of the border as limen (threshold, step through which one enters a domain) and as limes (line that circumscribes and de-limits a territory). If the first meaning indicates the possible openness to the relationship with the elsewhere and the outside, the second, on the other hand, refers to that which allows the subsistence (and essence) of a territory or an entity to be contained and de-limited, protecting it from the danger of the unlimited (the Greek apéiron). In this twofold sense, the border becomes the very essence of the place understood as the sphere of the human ethos, i.e. of a sojourn in which the experience of one’s own border - and of one’s own end - is also the experience of contact and hospitality with the other from oneself. Starting from this connection, an attempt will therefore be made to contrast the liminal places and their landscapes, in which - according to Heidegger’s interpretation of dwelling - it is possible for humans to dwell on Earth as mortals, with the ‘non-places’ typical of the homogenous and uniform space of globalisation, with reference to Marc Augé’s anthropological analyses.

Abstract

The paper analyses the relationship between place and border. I begin by considering the meaning of the border as limen (threshold, step through which one enters a domain) and as limes (line that circumscribes and de-limits a territory). If the first meaning indicates the possible openness to the relationship with the elsewhere and the outside, the second, on the other hand, refers to that which allows the subsistence (and essence) of a territory or an entity to be contained and de-limited, protecting it from the danger of the unlimited (the Greek apéiron). In this twofold sense, the border becomes the very essence of the place understood as the sphere of the human ethos, i.e. of a sojourn in which the experience of one’s own border - and of one’s own end - is also the experience of contact and hospitality with the other from oneself. Starting from this connection, an attempt will therefore be made to contrast the liminal places and their landscapes, in which - according to Heidegger’s interpretation of dwelling - it is possible for humans to dwell on Earth as mortals, with the ‘non-places’ typical of the homogenous and uniform space of globalisation, with reference to Marc Augé’s anthropological analyses.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgements V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Part I
  5. Borders as Translation Spaces 1
  6. Border Narratives: Crossing Lines and Telling Tales 9
  7. Geophilosophy of the Border: Beyond Immunitarian Politics 21
  8. Borders and Neo-Nationalism: A Geophilosophical Approach 37
  9. We Fight for this Land 51
  10. Converting the Limit: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Infinite in the Act of Difference 63
  11. Liminal Places and Non-Places 77
  12. Border Brushstrokes: The Ulster Arts Club and the Post-Partition Nation 91
  13. Bordering as the Breaking Force of Border Subjects 101
  14. Frontiers of Sexual Difference: The Phantasm of Gender 115
  15. Borders and Language: Hermeneutic-Philosophical Issues 129
  16. ‘Thou wenest Ich be a beggere’: Borders and the Habitus in Middle English Romance 145
  17. Funes the Arboreous: Borderless Ecologies in Borges’s Ficciones 157
  18. Part II
  19. Borders and Barbed Wire: Cahir Healy’s Memoirs from the Argenta Prison Ship 171
  20. A Residue of Boundary Correspondence 183
  21. Two Years on an Ulster Prison Ship 189
  22. Contributors and Editors 307
  23. Index 311
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111448473-007

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgements V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Part I
  5. Borders as Translation Spaces 1
  6. Border Narratives: Crossing Lines and Telling Tales 9
  7. Geophilosophy of the Border: Beyond Immunitarian Politics 21
  8. Borders and Neo-Nationalism: A Geophilosophical Approach 37
  9. We Fight for this Land 51
  10. Converting the Limit: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Infinite in the Act of Difference 63
  11. Liminal Places and Non-Places 77
  12. Border Brushstrokes: The Ulster Arts Club and the Post-Partition Nation 91
  13. Bordering as the Breaking Force of Border Subjects 101
  14. Frontiers of Sexual Difference: The Phantasm of Gender 115
  15. Borders and Language: Hermeneutic-Philosophical Issues 129
  16. ‘Thou wenest Ich be a beggere’: Borders and the Habitus in Middle English Romance 145
  17. Funes the Arboreous: Borderless Ecologies in Borges’s Ficciones 157
  18. Part II
  19. Borders and Barbed Wire: Cahir Healy’s Memoirs from the Argenta Prison Ship 171
  20. A Residue of Boundary Correspondence 183
  21. Two Years on an Ulster Prison Ship 189
  22. Contributors and Editors 307
  23. Index 311
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