关键词: 边地, 危脆性, “想象的‘非'共同体”, 他方

Abstract: This essay seeks to explore the shifting definitions of the borderland as a geopolitical space, a territorial gateway, a contact zone, a liminal terrain, a “state of exception,” and an imaginary portal. It looks into the intersection of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, political and ecological dynamics that inform the cartography of the Chinese borderland, from the Northeast to the Southwest, from Inner Mongolia to Tibet, and from Nanyang (Southeast Asia) to diaspora. It reflects on the recent interdisciplinary growth in understanding the characteristics of borders and frontiers, including migration and settlement, cultural hybridity, and transnationalism. It also examines the boundaries of literature as it manifests itself in multiple forms of media and mediation. The essay focuses on four topics: bordering land, the human condition of precarity, imagined non-community and borderland as literature.

Key words: borderland, precarity, “imagined non-community”, the other land