Online Launch Event of Cultural Studies Special Issue "When was the 'Smart Border'? Oct 16

The special issue “When was the ‘Smart Border’?” presents an intervention against the notion that ‘smart borders’ are phenomena of an ahistorical present and instead seek to grapple with the longer and shorter, changing and permanent legacies, hauntings, and genealogies of the current moment of violent border regimes and their articulation through technologies. By asking ‘When was the “Smart Border”’, contributions address different situated, global contexts of historical technological border making. Authors thus analyse how narratives of progress, innovation and disruption are ignorant of historical genealogies of borders and technology and perpetuate the grave violences of modern border regimes entrenched in colonialism and empire.