European-East Asian Borders in Translation

European-East Asian Borders is an international, trans-disciplinary volume that breaks new ground in the study of borders and bordering practices in global politics. It explores the insights and limitations of border theory developed primarily in the European context to a range of historical and contemporary border-related issues and phenomena in East Asia.

The essays presented here question, rather than assume, the various borders between inclusion/exclusion, here/there, us/them, that condition the (im)possibility of translating between histories, cultures and identities. Contributors suggest that the act of translation offers new ways of thinking about how border logics operate, taking on the concept of translation itself as border problematic and therefore raising questions of power and authority, such as who gets to act as a translator, or who benefits from the outcome.

The book will appeal not only to upper-level students and scholars with a geopolitical-historical interest in East Asia, but also to those who work in the inter-disciplinary field of border studies and others with an interest more generally in translation and the extent to which theory ‘travels’ across time and space.

Joyce C.H. Liu is Professor of Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis and Comparative Literature in the Graduate Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. She is currently the director of the International Institute for Cultural Studies of the University System of Taiwan, a research-let alliance of four universities.

Nick Vaughan-Williams is Reader in International Security at the University of Warwick, UK. His research focuses on the changing nature of borders in contemporary political life and the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of this. He has received funding in support of his research from the British Academy and UK Economic and Social Research Council.