We have never owned ‘Us’: A philosophical critique of nationalist b/ordering and othering ideologies

The recent decades have witnessed a proliferation of theorising about borders. Having moved away from the positivist paradigm that views borders as static ‘lines in the sand’, a myriad of different conceptualisations of borders as continuous socio-political processes have emerged: bordering, borderscapes and borderlands are just some of the more common ones. In this paper we aim to contribute to this processual turn in border studies by offering a philosophical critique of the typical appropriation logic - the claim to own our ‘Us’ again - in nationalist b/ordering and othering processes. Specifically, we theorise about the critical potential of the concepts of community and immunity in understanding these appropriative nationalist bordering processes. To that end, we notably draw on the works of philosophers Jean-Luc Nancy and Roberto Esposito. Both agree that community – human coexistence – is not an object and therefore cannot be appropriated. Esposito takes this further by elaborating on the logic immunity, through which the order deemed to be ‘Ours’ is meant to be protected from the disorder represented by an Other. He explains that immunisation is an attempt to appropriate an inappropriable identity. Ultimately, drawing on both thinkers, we argue that bordering efforts are self-defeating. B/ordering attempts to enclose a supposed identity to protect ‘us’, but in so doing the ‘us’ becomes owned by this supposed identity rather than vice versa. Immunity, Esposito specifies, eliminates community, and therefore ultimately so does b/ordering.