On Non/Permeable Boundaries: Borderscape Reading of McCann’s Apeirogon

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-26-2024

Abstract

This paper argues that the debordering process represented in McCann’s Apeirogon (2020) is predominantly Zionist, resulting in enticing violent practices against the Palestinians. The de facto colonial state of Israel invites multilayered conceptualizations of borders, some of which are depicted in McCann’s novel. Apeirogon reimagines porous and permeable Palestinian/Israeli symbolic and physical borders instead of the commonly perceived rigid ones. By envisioning porous Palestinian/Israeli borders, Apeirogon advocates for an interstitial state transcending different religious, political, and ideological schisms between both parties; however, does it suit the contextuality of colonized Palestine? Reading the novel through the lens of Border Theory, with its interrelated politics of in/visibility and in/exclusion, my premise is to analyze the extent to which Apeirogon renders a violent debordering process mandatory for the security of Israelis.

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