Border Theory

When reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn we should pay attention to the context: In the 1840s, Missouri was border land: frontier between the civilized East and the wild west, but also between North and South. Thus, some concepts from Border Theory may help understand aspects of the novel. This theoretical approach has been clearly explained by Professor Gustavo Fares, whose views are expressed in the article “Border Studies' Positionality”. In: Nueva Revista de Lenguas Extranjeras; Facultad de Filosofía y Letras UNCuyo; n 13, 2010: 19-35
* What is a border? “A line that indicates a boundary.”
* Borders can be physical, or imagined (in the sense of being ideas manifested in physical facts as barriers, police patrols, walls, etc.)
* Borders are a nation's territorial limits, while borders are “paradoxically different in location and similar in complexity and diversity, always signaling encounters and interactions between and among the areas they mark.” (21)
* “Border thinking and formations are not in any way the result of 'natural' processes, but of social and political ones and, as such, have histories which are always subject to a variety of interpretations.
* In some of the interpretations, the role of borders is dual and, oftentimes, contradictory: boundaries are there to exclude as well as to allow passing, to segregate, but also to place people beside another.
* Proximity breeds interaction, which in turn produces an hybrid or 'enriched' culture... (21)

In analyzing Huckleberry Finn, we will bear in mind some of the concepts below:
* Border
* Difference
* The Other
* Identity
* Language
* Voice – voiceless –
silence – language –
power
* Interaction
* Colonialism
* Imposed borders