Border Crossing and Borderlands
The category of border...speaks to the need to
create pedagogical conditions in which students become border crossers in order to
understand otherness in its own terms, and to
further create borderlands in which diverse
cultural resources allow for the fashioning of
new identities within existing configurations
of power. (Giroux, 1992, p. 28)
Borders are set up to define the places that are
safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A
border is a dividing line. A narrow strip, along
a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and
undetermined place created by the emotional
residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and the
forbidden are its inhabitants...(Anzaldua,
1987, p. 3)
Perhaps the most compelling descriptions of border crossing and borderlands can be found in the
work of Gloria Anzaldua (1987, 1990). Anzaldua
uses the image of crossing borders to describe the
Mexican-American woman's (mestiza) experience
of moving across cultural boundaries, being born
of two cultures. In her description, the mestiza
lives in a borderland, a state of "perpetual transition," in which different cultural beliefs and values
typically conflict, leading to confusion, a "mental
and emotional state of perplexity" (1990, p. 377).
While this confusion can be painful, it provides the
opportunity for the development of a new consciousness. The development of this new consciousness demands the reshaping of mental borders and a new process of thought: "from convergent thinking, analytical reasoning that tends to use
rationality to move toward a single goal (a Western
mode), to divergent thinking, characterized by
movement away from set patterns and goals and
toward a more whole perspective, one that includes
rather than excludes...The new mestiza copes by
developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity" (1990, p. 378-379). Anzaldua
suggests that transcending dualistic thinking is central to creating a society that brings people of
diverse cultures together and bridges different
voices and identities. For us, this intense metaphor
suggested the complex, changing, and often contradictory nature of students' viewpoints and the
shifting foundations on which these viewpoints
stand.
Critical postmodernists in education have adopted the border crossing metaphor to characterize
learning experiences that are central to the development of a "radical democracy" (Giroux, 1992, p.
3order Pedagogy: A Critical Frameworkfor Service-Learning
248). A key tenet of postmodernism is that all people, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, are
"in constant creation and negotiation within structures of ideology and material constraints" (Weiler,
1988, p. 467). These structures presently support
systems of unequal power and domination by privileging certain forms of knowledge and experience
over others. Critical postmodernists highlight how
power relationships permeate everyday life and are
represented in language, the "texts" of popular culture such as the media, as well as in the organization and practices of institutions such as schools.
Important in the postmodern perspective, however,
is the belief in individual agency and people's
potential to resist domination, however pervasive it
might seem to be. Border crossing serves as a
metaphor for how people might gain a more critical perspective on the forms of domination inherent in their own histories, knowledge, and practices, and learn to value alternative forms of knowledge. Crossing borders of knowledge, and entering
into "borderlands," where existing patterns of
thought, relationship, and identity are called into
question and juxtaposed with alternative ways of
knowing and being, provides the opportunity for
creative and oppositional reconstructions of self,
knowledge, and culture: "borderlands should be
seen as sites both for critical analysis and as a
potential source of experimentation, creativity, and
possibility" (Giroux, p. 34).
While we found these ideas to be provocative,
we found concrete descriptions of border crossing
in the literature to be limited in number. However,
as we looked at our students' experiences from this
perspective, we perceived that service-learning
offered a wealth of opportunities and examples of
border crossing. One of the more obvious examples
is crossing physical borders, as the university tutors
left campus and entered places in the community
and community agencies that they ordinarily would
never go. Physical borders were redefined as the
community became their classroom for learning
about adult literacy. Crossing these physical borders, as Susan's example suggests, exposed tutors
to the effects of poverty and racism on individual
lives, suggesting the need for more complex ways
of understanding the potential for individual
agency. Such border crossing also highlighted the
social boundaries that kept their lives separate from
low-literate adults in the community, even though
they often were close in proximity to campus. As
Dwight's story illustrates, the tutors crossed and
redefined social borders in their relationships with
the adult literacy students, as they variously established relationships involving friendship and mutuality rather than assuming a detached "profession
75
