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vast metropolis stretching from Los Angeles in the north to Tijuana and
Mexicali in the south heralds a new form – the post-border city.
Comprised of both Baja California (Mexico) and Alta California
(Southern California), “Bajalta California” is now a milieu of
constantly shifting and intersecting geographies, economies, and
cultures. While cross-border exchange has existed for well over a
century, in recent years the accelerating currents of cultural and
economic globalization have hastened the emergence of this
transnational megalopolis.
Postborder City is an interdisciplinary investigation of the
hybrid culture on both sides of the increasingly fluid U.S-Mexico
border, spanning the disciplines of art, film studies, art history,
urban planning, geography, and Latina/o and American studies.
In
their exploration of this emergent postborder movement, Dear and
Leclerc focus in particular on the relationships between urbanization
and contemporary cultural production. Postborder City concludes with
the idea that the “transcendental, transnational aesthetic” being
produced within contemporary Bajalta holds the promise for a wider
reflection of the politics of cultural representation in an
increasingly post-national world.
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Recommendations:
“This book provides a
doorway into a new space of hybridity. The imaginative energies released
by a collective of artists, academics, critics and curators all working
on the one 'postborder zone' of Bajalta California are used to galvanize
this space, producing many original and exciting insights. A feast of a
book.”
--Nigel Thrift, Professor of Geography, University of Bristol
“Postborder City is a bold and timely intervention in the
interdisciplinary field of border studies. Drawing on critical
vocabulary from urban planning, cultural studies, anthropology,
sociology, and Marxist literary theory, Dear and Leclerc's theoretical
framework is attentive to the different historical, geographical, and
social factors that have shaped the region under investigation. Taken as
a whole, the essays in the volume strive for balance between the
polarized celebratory and dystopian views of the U.S.-Mexico border
region that prevail in much of the existing literature in the field. I
have been waiting for just such an historically grounded study to teach
in my courses.”
--Claire F. Fox, Associate Professor of English, and Co-director,
Latin American Studies, University of Iowa
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