A second form of geopolitical rhetoric invokes the geographical borders between nations to suggest not only those material conditions as they impact on gender formations but also their figural function to describe psychological, spiritual, and cultural borderlands in between differences of all kinds. As the liminal space in between, the interface of self and other, the interstitial location of syncretic transculturation, borders highlight the paradoxical processes of connection and separation. Regulatory borders are erected to defend against the pollution of the Other or to impose confinements of the Other. But borders are also porous sites of intercultural mixing, cultural hybridization, and creolization. Borders are spaces where murderous acts take place, where identity, particularly in its fundamentalist form, ensures clashing differences and fixed limits. They are also the spaces of desire for connection, utopian longing, and the blending of differences. The multiple meanings and possibilities of border rhetoric is evident in one of the most influential texts in transnational cultural studies, namely the hybridic and autobiographical essay/poem Borderlands/ La Frontera-The New Mestiza (1987) by Gloria Anzaldúa
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