Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US-Mexico Frontier (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique) by D. Robert DeChaine


Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US-Mexico Frontier (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique)
Title : Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US-Mexico Frontier (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique)
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0817357165
ISBN-10 : 9780817357160
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 284
Publication : First published August 30, 2012

Undertakes a wide-ranging examination of the US-Mexico border as it functions in the rhetorical production of civic unity in the United States A “border” is a powerful and versatile concept, variously invoked as the delineation of geographical territories, as a judicial marker of citizenship, and as an ideological trope for defining inclusion and exclusion. It has implications for both the empowerment and subjugation of any given populace. Both real and imagined, the border separates a zone of physical and symbolic exchange whose geographical, political, economic, and cultural interactions bear profoundly on popular understandings and experiences of citizenship and identity. The border’s rhetorical significance is nowhere more apparent, nor its effects more concentrated, than on the frontier between the United States and Mexico. Often understood as an unruly boundary in dire need of containment from the ravages of criminals, illegal aliens, and other undesirable threats to the national body, this geopolitical locus exemplifies how normative constructions of “proper”; border relations reinforce definitions of US citizenship, which in turn can lead to anxiety, unrest, and violence centered around the struggle to define what it means to be a member of a national political community.

Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US-Mexico Frontier (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique) Reviews

  • Justin

    Very repetitive, and I'm not sure who the audience for this is supposed to be
    The premise of the book is that borders are complicated, rhetorical, and mostly bad. A few essays add some substance to this basic logic, most don't, and some don't seem to do much of anything. If you already know border militarization os a bad thing, you don't really need this book. If you support border militarization, you likely lack the necessary reading level to comprehend what this book is even talking about. I would give it a 2/5, but I'm throwing in an extra star because it has a good message. Also, there are some unexplored implications for thinking about borders more broadly. For example, one thing I'm interested in exploring further is the rhetoric about how we rhetorically border racial categories. Who gets to be white, black, latinx, etc? A lot of this book's logic has further implications that the book unfortunately doesn't explore.