Spatial Utopia

The border is not a neutral line of separation; borders between nation-states demarcate belonging and nonbelonging and authorize a distinction between norm and exception. The authority accorded by the territorial border vindicates a curtailed conception of justice, one that is particularly telling in its circular claim to being an exhaustive representation of human need. Justice operates to outline the limits of a spatial utopia, an attempt at a purposive unity enveloped by the nation -state. The territorial border thus functions to distinguish an arena within which justice may operate to entrench a space of utopic unity. This results in a grounded base for thinking and responding to chaotic heterotopia in the world.[...] the clearing of utopic space and the limiting of justice rest on a desire to conceal or not hear voices and experiences of heterotopia and dystopia —not out there, but within. The border is not empty or readily pliable; it is a paradoxical zone of resistance, agency, and rogue embodiment.

Rajaram Prem Kumar and Carl Grundy-Warr. Borderscapes : Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge. University of Minnesota Press, 2008. ix.