Already, in the womb, our brains are laying down neural pathways that will determine how we perceive the world and our place in it. Cognitive mapping is the way we mobilise a definition of who we are, and borders are the way we protect this definition. All borders – the lines and symbols on a map, the fretwork of walls and fences on the ground, and the often complex enmeshments by which we organise our lives – are explanations of identity. We construct borders, literally and figuratively, to fortify our sense of who we are; and we cross them in search of who we might become. They are philosophies of space, credibility contests, latitudes of neurosis, signatures to the social contract, soothing containments, scars.
They’re also death zones, portals to the underworld, where explanations of identity are foreclosed.
”-
Frances Stonor Saunders, Where on Earth are you?
Frances Stonor Saunders’s piece in this issue was delivered as the second of this year’s LRB Winter Lectures at the British Museum.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/152776295857
