Liminality, Lim, Mobility and Memory. Disrupting the Nature of Things, Beings and Becomings

Abstract

Abstract Engaging with four geopolitical timespaces, and the concepts of liminality, lim/lines/ borders/boundaries, mobility and memory, against the backdrop of pre-, anti-, post- and de-colonial ideas, this study illustrates how tenets of what we call a “Second Wave of Southern Perspectives” (SWaSP) can illuminate the myths and imaginations that continue to give credibility to the idea of bounded language, identity and nation-states, including the role of languaging as constitutive dimension of these processes. The study presented in this paper has two aims. First, it explicates a SWaSP framing wherein the role of languaging is both a key dimension of the (multi-scalar) organization of everyday life inside and outside institutional physical-digital spaces, and of the remembering of lim i.e., lines or boundaries as dimensions of belonging. Second, by juxtaposing ideas about belonging and (shifting) boundaries across time and spaces, it highlights the mechanisms involved in contemporary re-enforcements of archaic conceptualizations of language, identity and nation-spaces across global settings. We argue that these mechanisms constitute a similar endeavor across the global-North/South, not least given recent discussions related to mobility and digitalization more generally wherein issues regarding democracy and equity are increasingly confronted with rising right-wing agendas and a racial renaissance. We attempt to show how identity tensions of “individuals/communities” and “an-other” are co-construed and argue that such processes contribute to the re-enforcing naturalization of archaic conceptualizations pertaining to not only language, identity, nation-spaces, but also nationalism.