From a feminist technoecological perspective on borders, therefore, the phrase for earthly survival today might very well be: ‘Whoever is here, is from here’.

Recently I published with my dear colleague Josef Barla a new paper called Technoecologies of Borders: Thinking with Borders as Multispecies Matters of Care in the peer review journal Australian Feminist Studies, Volume 32/2017.

The paper is available open access and tries to develop what we call a technoecological perspective on current border politics from a feminist and posthuman perspective. After a theoretical part on solidarity, matters of care and what Deleuze and Guattari call the “Mechanosphere”, we develop our perspective following two case studies, one on the necropolitics on border-thinking in the rightwing but also “eco-conservative” discourses on alien species and how to deal with them, and in the second case study we look at a problematic experimental border politics that tried to define the “original country” of refugees through DNA and isotope analysis, connecting the bodies of refugees with geological markers. In the conclusion we argue for a transversal solidarity from a posthuman perspective to fight against these new intensifications of borders by scientific and technoecological means.

The paper can be read here, and is open access.

The abstract of our paper reads as follows:

Abstract

Reading Félix Guattari’s concept of ecology through feminist accounts of care and solidarity, and vice versa, in this article, we propose the concept of feminist technoecology as a speculative mode of thinking with borders. Rather than considering borders as lines on maps or primarily as physical arrangements, we argue that feminist technoecology allows for an understanding of borders as multispecies matters of care where cuts that matter are enacted, and precisely therefore calls for transversal solidarity and care that goes beyond the human. Turning to two stories revolving around the naturalisation of borders, bodies, and territories, we demonstrate that a technoecological take on borders not only fundamentally questions an a‑priori distinction between technology, ecology, geology, politics, bodies, and a more-than-human world, but also foregrounds different modes of attentiveness with regard to questions of care, nativity, and mattering.