Living with(out) borders: The intimacy of oppression

Recounting the multiple oppressions of the queer Chicana, Anzaldúa describes this as the “intimate terror” of being caught in-between the different worlds she inhabits. In this paper I argue that the theme of intimacy is crucial for understanding the political life and its hold on the subject's body. My discussion of intimacy and oppression begins in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy because it presents an influential and constructive way to think about intersubjective relations and the intimate way we inhabit our worlds. I am particularly interested in his description of the body as a desiring body that is without borders and encroaches on other bodies. The writings of Anzaldúa, Hooks, Fanon, and Ahmed importantly complicate the initial analysis. While understanding bodies as “living without borders” is helpful for beginning to understand the intimate structure of oppressive relations, it does not yet make sense of the very real and oppressive borders that we might encounter on a daily basis. I suggest that we understand such borders as equally intimate, that is, as enacted sedimentations of the lived body. Thus I conclude that *because we are boundless* we engage in an intimate intersubjective relationship that is *boundary creating* and thus potentially violent.