Borders of Desire - (Rethinking Borders) by Elissa Helms & Tuija Pulkkinen (Hardcover)

About the Book

Borders of Desire is a collection of studies from the eastern borders of Europe, particularly the Baltics and the Balkans, that take a novel approach to borders and the work they do. Instead of viewing borders only as obstructions to the fulfillment of desire, this book shows how borders produce desire, particularly gendered and sexualized desire.

Book Synopsis

Borders of desire takes a novel approach to the study of borders: rather than seeing them only as obstacles to the fulfillment of human desires, this collection focuses on how borders can also be productive of desire. Based on long-term ethnographic engagement with sites along the eastern borders of Europe, particularly in the Baltics and the Balkans, the studies in this volume illuminate how gendered and sexualized desires are generated by the existence of borders and how they are imagined. As the chapters show, borders can create new desires expressed as aspirations, resentments, and actions including physical movements across borders for pleasure or work, or collective enactments of political ideals or resistance. The collection also shows how the persistent east/west symbolic border continues to act as a source of these desires in European political and social life.

From the Back Cover

'Within a literature and dominant political discourse that overwhelmingly continue to view borders as obstacles, this book regards borders as performative: it asks what borders 'do', rather than what they 'are'. By asking how borders produce - rather than only thwart - desires, the authors look afresh at the many ways gender and sexuality are at issue in border crossing.'
Jane Cowan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Sussex

Borders of desire takes a novel approach to the study of borders: rather than seeing them only as obstacles to the fulfillment of human desires, this collection focuses on how borders can also be productive of desire.

Based on long-term engagement with sites along the eastern borders of Europe, particularly in the Baltics and the Balkans, the studies in this volume illuminate how gendered and sexualised desires are generated by the existence of borders and how they are imagined. The book takes a performative approach, emphasising not what borders are, but what borders do - and, in this case, what they produce. Borders are thus treated less as artefacts of desires and more as sources of desire: a border's existence, which marks a difference between here and there, can trigger imaginations about what might be on the other side, creating new desires expressed as aspirations, resentments, actions, movements, political ideals or resistance. As the chapters show, sometimes these desires spring from orientalising imaginaries of the other, sometimes from economically inspired fantasies of a different life, and sometimes from ethnosexual projections or reimaginings of political pasts and futures. Taken as a whole, Borders of desire offers new perspectives on the work borders do, as well as on the gendered and sexed lives of those in and from the eastern borders of Europe, and the persistent East/West symbolic divide that continues to permeate European political and social life.

Review Quotes

"Within a literature and dominant political discourse that overwhelmingly continue to view borders as obstacles, this book regards borders as performative: it asks what borders 'do', rather than what they 'are'. By asking how borders produce--rather than only thwart--desires, the authors look afresh at the many ways gender and sexuality are at issue in border crossing. Considering desire, they return attention to the agency, humanity and imagination of border crossers and offer a glimpse into the complexity of their dreams, their decision-making and their experiences."
Jane Cowan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Sussex

"Empirically grounded and conceptually consistent, this collection is a fascinating sociological and anthropological read. It challenges the view of Europe as a homogeneous project and offers a nuanced vision of this area through its multiple borders and the diverse mutual desires of citizens of adjacent European countries with different historical, political and economic backgrounds. I would highly recommend this book to a multidisciplinary readership, including scholars of migration, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial and postsocialist studies, European studies and political science, as well as media and memory studies, in addition to border researchers."
Olga Tkach, Journal of Borderlands Studies

"This volume provides pivotal insights into important immediate antecedents to current anxieties, imaginaries, and controversies playing out on Europe's eastern borders."
Katharina Wegmann, Comparative Southeast European Studies

'Unarguably, one of its most important contributions is the conceptualization of borders as porous and contingent. Under the current geopolitical tensions and the hardening of state borders between the EU states with Russia and Belarus as well as the symbolically hardening of borders between Israel and the Middle East, reflecting the 'othering' processes, the book reveals how border territories that Anzaldúa (1987) and Vila (2003) describe as being infiltrated with hatred, anger, and exploitations, may at the same time create and be filled with various forms of desires. These desires inevitably make the borders porous, revealing their artificiality, yet importance in forming identities and communities and imagining other ways.'
Pauliina Lukinmaa, Nordic Journal of Migration Research

About the Author

Elissa Helms is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna

Tuija Pulkkinen is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki