Borders are essentially imaginary structures, but their effects are very real. This volume explores both geopolitical and conceptual borders through an interdisciplinary lens, bridging the disciplines of philosophy and literature. With contributions from scholars around the world, this collection closely examines the concepts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the paradoxical ambiguities inherent in these seemingly solid binary oppositions, while critiquing structures of power that produce and police these borders. As a political paradigm, liminality may be embraced by marginal subjects and communities, further blurring the boundaries between oppressive distinctions and categories.

Through the stories of women in movement in the Americas, Europe and Australasia, this book explores a decolonising and feminised politics of liberation which is being weaved through the words and worlds of black, colonised and subaltern women. These stories demonstrate the complex and multiple forms of critique as practice that are being developed by women in movement in multiple sites of the Global South. Written through story, prose, poetry, analysis and offering case-studies, methodologies, practices and generative questions the book expresses and contributes to the (co) creation of a new language of liberation. This is an enfleshed language in which there is a return of the world to the word, of the body to the text, and of the heart/womb to thought. This is a language of the political in which a new political subjectivity that is multiple, deeply relational and becoming is formed. The book offers a window onto the complexities and depths of the wounding enacted by patriarchal capitalist coloniality through these stories but it also offers, through sharing and conceptualising prefigurative and dialogical co-creation of critique, the gift of practices of healing as emancipation, and the conditions of possibility for our collective liberation.

The concept of home has been changing for more than a century. This change began with colonialism and the movement of people across the globe, often within a set power dynamic. Since people now move with greater frequency, the question of where home is and what home means is more relevant than ever before. Meticulously researched, Transformations of the Liminal Self addresses the formation of home and identity and the ways in which the latter depends on the former. Using the postcolonial Muslim characters in the literary works of British authors Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, and Fadia Faqir, author Alaa Alghamdi shows how home and identity are profoundly impacted by the power dynamics of the colonial relationship, the individual immigrants experience, and the subjects multicultural setting. Drawing upon the theoretical work of Homi Bhabha, Rosemary Marangoly George, Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak, and Edward Said, the conception of home and the formation of hybrid identities is examined and connected to larger cultural manifestations of MuslimWestern relationships. More specifically, Alghamdi explores how these characters define their home. Bold and challenging, Alghamdis work offers a rigorous and well-articulated contribution to the ongoing academic conversation about identity and postcolonial literature.

Stuart Hall’s retirement from the Open University in 1997 provided a unique opportunity to reflect on an academic career which has had the most profound impact on scholarship and teaching in many parts of the world. From his early work on the media, through his influential re-working of Gramsci for the analysis of Britain in the late 1970s, through his considered debates on Thatcherism and more recently on “race” and new ethnicities, Hall has been an inspirational figure for generations of academics. He has helped to make universities places where ideas and social commitment can exist alongside each other. This collection invites a wide range of academics who have been influenced by Stuart Hall’s writing to contribute not a memoir or a eulogy but an engaged piece of social, cultural or historical analysis which continues and develops the field of thinking opened up by Hall. The topics covered include identity and hybridity, history and post-colonialism, pedagogy and cultural politics, space and place, globalization and economy, modernity and difference.

Contained Empowerment and the Liminal Nature of Feminisms and Activisms examines the processes by which activist successes are limited and outlines a theoretical framing of the liminal and temporal limits to social justice efforts as “contained empowerment.” With a focused lens on the third wave and contemporary forms of feminism, the author investigates feminist activity from the early 1990s through responses and reactions to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and contrasts these efforts with anti-feminist, white supremacist, and other structural normalizing efforts designed to limit and repress women's, gendered, and reproductive rights. This book includes analyses of celebrity activism, girl power, transnational feminist NGOs, digital feminisms, and the feminist mimicry applied by practitioners of neo-liberal and anti-feminism. Victoria A. Newsom concludes that the contained nature of feminist empowerment illustrates how activists must engage directly with intersectional challenges and address the multiplicities of structural oppressions in order to breach containment.

This book is the first attempt to rethink and appraise the role of temporary commoning experiences that develop in contexts of crisis. Activist and urban planner, Angelos Varvarousis, argues that there is a certain type of commons – the liminal commons – which despite their often short lives play a crucial function in contemporary societies; they demarcate and facilitate transitions at the individual, collective and ultimately the societal level. Through an intense exploration of grassroots projects such as occupied squares, self-organised refugee camps, solidarity food structures and social clinics in crisis-ridden Greece, the author observes that humans still invent such collectively performed rituals in order to prepare, symbolize and practically explore the possibility of transformation and transition. In a period in which traditional rites of passage have faded away but many changes are urgently needed, liminal commons can be a key element in the process of claiming awareness and control over the mechanisms of individual, collective and societal emancipation.

This book analyses various forms of liminality and transgression in different geographies and demonstrates how and why various physical and symbolic boundaries create liminality and transgression. Its focus is on comprehending the ways in which these borders and boundaries generate liminality and transgression rather than viewing them solely as issues. It provides case studies from the past and present, allowing readers to connect subjects, periods, and geographies. It consists of theoretical and empirical chapters that demonstrate how borders and liminality are interconnected. The book also benefits from the power of several visual essays by artists to complete the theoretical and empirical chapters which demonstrate different forms of liminality without need of much words. The book will be of interest to researchers and students working in the fields of urban and rural studies, urban sociology, cities and communities, urban and regional planning, urban anthropology, political science, migration studies, human geography, cultural geography, urban anthropology, and visual arts.

Okinawa, one of the smallest prefectures of Japan, has drawn much international attention because of the long-standing presence of US bases and the people’s resistance against them. In recent years, alternative discourses on Okinawa have emerged due to the territorial disputes over the Senkaku Islands, and the media often characterizes Okinawa as the borderland demarcating Japan, China (PRC), and Taiwan (ROC). While many politicians and opinion makers discuss Okinawa’s national and security interests, little attention is paid to the local perspective toward the national border and local residents’ historical experiences of border crossings. Through archival research and first-hand oral histories, Hiroko Matsuda uncovers the stories of common people’s move from Okinawa to colonial Taiwan and describes experiences of Okinawans who had made their careers in colonial Taiwan. Formerly the Ryukyu Kingdom and a tributary country of China, Okinawa became the southern national borderland after forceful Japanese annexation in 1879. Following Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War and the cession of Taiwan in 1895, Okinawa became the borderland demarcating the Inner Territory from the Outer Territory. The borderland paradoxically created distinction between the two sides, while simultaneously generating interactions across them. Matsuda’s analysis of the liminal experiences of Okinawan migrants to colonial Taiwan elucidates both Okinawans’ subordinate status in the colonial empire and their use of the border between the nation and the colony. Drawing on the oral histories of former immigrants in Taiwan currently living in Okinawa and the Japanese main islands, Matsuda debunks the conventional view that Okinawa’s local history and Japanese imperial history are two separate fields by demonstrating the entanglement of Okinawa’s modernity with Japanese colonialism. The first English-language book to use the oral historical materials of former migrants and settlers—most of whom did not experience the Battle of Okinawa—Liminality of the Japanese Empire presents not only the alternative war experiences of Okinawans but also the way in which these colonial memories are narrated in the politics of war memory within the public space of contemporary Okinawa.

This book deals with letters in Anglophone Canadian short stories of the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century in the context of liminality. It argues that in the course of the epistolary renaissance, the letter – which has often been deemed to be obsolete in literature – has not only enjoyed an upsurge in novels but also migrated to the short story, thus constituting the genre of the epistolary short story. .