Estudios Fronterizos (Jul 2011)
Border mythology: Turner and modernity
Abstract
Modernity has been creating spaces, new boundaries and borders, as metaphysical, mythological and symbolic marks of physical and imaginary territories. Modern space and its borders are metaphors, boundaries that are created, walls that rise to identify with some and categorize others. In this short paper we want to approach the problem of the transformation of the idea of border (geographical, cultural, symbolic, etc.), for a reflection on the transformations of that civilized obsession called border. The border has always been a reference in facing the identities, names, symbols, different imaginary: it is more confrontational line between two otherness. From the previous framework, we reflect on Turnerian mythology, as we believe that behind the creation of the imagination of the northern border is the mythical vision of the American frontier as ideological canon that explains and confirms the presence of the white race in a border re–made in the image and likeness of the “American Dream”. Frederick Turner’s reflection on the role of the frontier in American history is not only the study of the importance of progress towards the West but –even more so, is the analysis of meaning that had the American frontier as a historical process that ended in 1893, as Turner said, but rather extended into the twentieth century and continues to constantly shaping the process of territorialization of the border.
