‘Spatial Play’ at the Ends of Europe: Oyapock Bridge, Amazonia

Abstract

Drawing on the work of philosopher-semiotician Louis Marin, this contribution to Outlook on Europe reveals the 'spatial play' of contending outlooks hovering fitfully over the construction of a bridge at the 'ends of Europe', in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, on that very spot where French Guiana and Brazil, the European Union and Mercosul, physically touch one another over a muddy tributary, the Rio Oyapock. The inter-play of visions colliding around the Oyapock bridge, it is argued, illuminates the paradoxes and contradictions of European territorial governance in the globalised time-space of its postcolonial frontiers. In spite of the high geopolitical rhetoric seeking to unite both continents, the peculiar blindness of Europe's metropolitan gaze vis-a-vis indigenous difference sets the stage for perverse effects of exclusion and disempowerment in and around the site of the bridge itself, extending far into its regional hinterlands. Framed against the backdrop of a long, 'utopian' modernity of European imperial expansion and territorial conquest, the ghostly spatial dynamics surrounding the Oyapock River bridge project serve to illuminate wider challenges to the projection of EU influence 'in the world'. A close examination of similar dynamics elsewhere may help bring into focus the lineaments of a more fully confident and mature postcolonial European border studies.

Migrating Borders and Moving Times. Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in Europe

“…At the fringes of state territoriality, the flâneur becomes a bordering body, literally in-corporealising a border-crossing experience within himself. The experiential force of such a 'limit event' opens the body not only 'against' a singular border but channels it to an affective transnationalism connecting it to myriad border sites not contained by the state line proper (Kramsch and Dimitrovova 2008;Kramsch 2016). It is here, in effect, that the act of border walking invokes a critical comparative lens that refuses to be subsumed under a monolingual regime of state power purportedly enforced at the border.…”

Beyond the “lettered border”

“…Under this more expansive, transatlantic optic, Gibraltar could be apprehended no longer as "last-corner-to-be-reunited-with-Spain" but as an important node in a burgeoning archipelago of privatized "fiscal paradises" which would include Luxembourg and The Netherlands within, as well as the Bahamas and Cayman Islands, outside of "Europe". In the same vein, the so-called "Triple Border" between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina would have to be reconceptualized beyond their respective national territories, taking into account the supposed presence of Hezbollah and transcontinental political Islam (Manero, 2007); the riverine border between French Guyana and Brazil could be illuminated as a strategic space for France and the EU to project themselves into "their" European and Amazon border region so as to intervene in global debates on sustainable development ( Boudoux d'Hautefeuille, 2010;Kramsch, 2016); and one would have to resituate the northern border between Mexico and the United States by way of a branch-plant industry ever more connected to China and Southeast Asia (Alegría Olazábal, 2009). In each context, the border regions of Latin America could be grasped as "laboratories" for the testing of neoliberal and securitarian strategies that can then be exported to other parts of the world (Manero, 2007).…”

Comentario. Minghi: el paréntesis utópico en los estudios europeos de fronteras

“…A pesar de los esfuerzos de geógrafos más jóvenes que la generación de Minghi en los años 1980 y 1990 por resaltar el aspecto de la línea divisoria en el estudio de fronteras bajo el disfraz intelectual de un posmodernismo mal comprendido (Newman y Paasi, 1998;Newman, 2006), aquel llamado de Minghi a insertar más activamente los estudios de frontera en las preocupaciones de la teoría y praxis social sería recuperada en los ensayos del filósofo francés Étienne Balibar (2004aBalibar ( , 2004b. Al comienzo del siglo XXI aquel espíritu crítico-socio-espacial se reflejaría en los ensayos del sociólogo británico Chris Rumford (2006Rumford ( , 2008Rumford ( , 2012; en las intervenciones poscoloniales del geógrafo francés-alemán-americano Olivier Thomas Kramsch (2002;2010b;2016), también junto con la geógrafa californiana Barbara Hooper (Hooper y Kramsch, 2007); en los trabajos de las sociólogas daneses Dorte Andersen y Marie Sandberg (2015); o en las obras de las geógrafas españolas María Lois Barrio (2014) y Keina Espiñeira González (2013), en las cuales la frontera es aprehendida no sólo como fenómeno material de división y separación material sino como un horizonte político y epistemológico desde donde re-pensar la espacialidad de Europa tout court.…”