Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference
This assumed isomorphism of space, place, and culture results in some significant problems. First, there is the issue of those who inhabit the border, what Gloria Anzaldúa calls the “narrow strip along steep edges” of national boundaries. The fiction of conclusion that a focus on people who live in the borders between dominant societies or nations (and here borders is also a metaphor for people who identify, culturally, with more than one group) makes clear the fact that differences between cultures come about not because of their isolation from each other, but because of their connections with each other. Such a conclusion also suggests that along with difference comes the hierarchies of power. Culture is not only a concept that expresses difference between peoples, but also a concept that masks the uneven power relations between peoples, and these uneven power relations can only exist through connection, rather than isolation.