Two imaginaries of space have played a crucial

role in the emergence of liberalism and its

diasporic imperial and colonial forms, and have
grounded its disavowal of its own ongoing
violence. On the one hand is the horizon and on
the other is the frontier. These two spatial

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imaginaries have provided the conditions in
which liberalism Ð in both its emergent form and
its contemporary late form Ð has dodged
accusations that its truth is best understood
from a long history and ongoing set of violent
extractions, abandonments, and erasures of
other forms of existence, and have enabled
liberalism to deny what it must eventually accept
as its own violence. The horizon and the frontier:
Elizabeth A. Povinelli these two topological fantasies anchor the
supposed world-historical difference between
Horizons and liberal governance, as a putative normative
orientation and specific rule of law, and all other
past and possible future forms of relationality.
Frontiers, Late Let us tackle first the horizon as a sine qua non of
liberalismÕs toxic inhabitation.
Liberal ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAh, the horizon; JŸrgen Habermas captures
the hold it has on liberal reason: ÒHorizons are
open, and they shift; we enter into them and they
Territoriality, in turn move with us.Ó1 They might be historical
horizons within one community, or the
and Toxic translational possibilities between two or more Ð
both are where the truth of liberalism lies.2 There
Habitats are facts, as Habermas says, and there are
Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats

norms. And it is in the norms, or in the measure

between the facts and the norms, that liberalism
claims its world-historical exception from other
state forms of violence. But tell that to those who
are subject to liberal facticity. They will respond
e-flux journal #90 Ñ april 2018 Ê Elizabeth A. Povinelli

that this ever receding vista of liberal norm is the

liberal fact Ð indeed fact after fact shows no
such norm exists in fact. Instead of a norm, the
horizon is the deployment of a spatial imaginary
to bracket all forms of violence as the result of
the unintended, accidental, and unfortunate
unfolding of liberalismÕs own dialectic. The use of
portraits of indigenous peoples and black and
brown bodies as mental and social savages that
has justified the appropriation of lives, the
extermination of bodies, and the destruction of
lands: liberal apologies finally uttered in
statements that describe these violent
representations and actions as aberrations of its
own ideals. The vicious absorption of entire
worlds into the logics of liberal capitalism: the
apology that it should have been done more
gently and with more cultural and social
sensitivity. Or as Christina Sharpe suggests, the
liberal horizon is in fact the wake where African
men, women, and children struggle to find
possibility in the impossible after-space of the
transatlantic slave trade, in which liberal capital
claimed to be traveling toward a new ideal man.3
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn Economies of Abandonment, I described

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these worlds of existence that are forced to find the toward-which the spirit of a certain kind of
their way in forsaken and disavowed liberal man soars, powered by fear of the toxicity he has
space between fact and norm as inhabitants of produced and left behind in so many sacked
the brackets of late liberalism.4 For them the worlds.9 And thus we come to the frontier and its
ÒaccidentsÓ and ÒexceptionsÓ define liberalism dynamics.
when the horizon is withdrawn. For them the ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe frontier has, of course, a specific

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problem is not that they are not allowed to reach linguistic and social etiology, dating from the
the norm but that there is no actual norm. fifteenth-century French word of the same
Instead, the ideal-norm is what allows liberalism spelling, referring to the place where two
to act with impunity in the present, what allows countries meet, the abutting edges of sovereign
liberalism to believe that its acts of violence are lands. Later the frontier would be absorbed into
justifiable or unintentionally unjust. The cunning Anglo diasporic discourse and law as the
of recognition is one mode in which this contested space between civilized and
maneuver unfolds.5 After decades of anti- uncivilized natures and cultures. Thus the
colonial and radical social critique ripped apart frontier moved, in discourse, from a space
the justificatory surface of liberalismÕs claim to between two sovereign powers to the space
be sacking worlds in order to extend civilization, between civilizationÕs sovereignty and the terror
liberal recognition apologized and proclaimed its of barbarity. It is where the sovereignty of
desire to hear and find worthy the massive civilization might be upended by other nonsocial
crowds of existence that it had previously imaginaries. No matter FoucaultÕs partition in the
interned in the exception. And like neoliberal modes of governance (sovereignty on the one
economics, liberalism shifted the burden of the side and discipline and biopolitics on the other)
care of the self away from itself and onto those it Ð it matters little what form liberal governance
has already harmed, in a doublespeak that takes when it peers over the horizon of the
imposed a double bind onto the legally colonial frontier. Nor does it matter whether we
enunciative possibilities of others. Just tell us use SchmittÕs marking of 1492 as the date when
your cultural and social values. Just donÕt tell us the nomos of the world emerged as Europe used
anything that will actually threaten the Òskeleton various flags to territorialize the earth, or
of principle which gives the body of our law its whether we insist that it was only with the
shape and internal consistency.Ó6 This globalization of neoliberal capitalism that this
Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats

doublespeak double bind of recognition Ð this global nomos settled in. In all of these cases,
revised horizon of the Human Ð marks all others what matters for those on the other side of
as having been let in. This mark genders and liberalismÕs claim that it acts violently only when
racializes the bodies of all excluded from the civilization is at stake, or only when it is
horizon of whiteness, a point Franz Fanon made mistaken in its understanding of the cultural and
e-flux journal #90 Ñ april 2018 Ê Elizabeth A. Povinelli

long ago, and which has been more recently social qualities that exist on the other side of the
discussed by Denise Ferreira da Silva.7 frontier, is that a power is seeking to advance an
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn short, the horizon is not the End of a ever larger territoriality of rule.
certain Man but a mechanism by which a specific ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is the view from the other side that first
violent history of some men is kept from ever critiques the sovereign, his sovereign powers,
landing. Even the Man doesnÕt actually want to and its ancient theorists Ð Jean Bodin, Hugo
arrive in the land the horizon hopes for. If he Grotius, and Thomas Hobbes. And it is from
lands he will be no different than any other form spaces such as Critical Indigenous Theory that a
of existence. Worse, he thinks, he will be worse demand for an exit route from more modern
off without this simmering distinction he once theorists, such as Carl Schmitt and Giorgio
had but has now lost. Others will not lose this Agamben, can be imagined. Western political
fantasy, because it was never theirs. How quickly theory has used sovereignty figures to create the
then do we see any announcement of an actual frontier in discourses of law and discovery, of war
End of History excitedly announced to have been and expansion, of empire and its liberation that
a mirage?8 The Spirit lives on, violently unfolding in turn transform space into a contest between
its own inner horizon temporally and spatially. the rulers or a contestation between the ruled
Let us hitch a ride with Elon Musk to Mars my and the unruly. In both frontiers the physics of
friends, to Mars. There we can once again this megalomaniacal vision of sovereign expanse
disavow the toxic destruction of existence far across a frontier is Newtonian. It is the physics of
away on a long-forgotten earth. And here we bodies at rest or motion, of opposing forces, of
catch a glimpse of how the horizon can be easily equal and opposite reactions. But between rulers
transformed into a frontier. Thus it is not the frontier should be a border where reactions
surprising to find liberal political theory speaking should end, where the politics of peace should
equally of justice, law, science, and social reign. Once the war has been won, the frontier
difference as both horizon and frontier. Both are secured, the politics of sovereign peace keeps all

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bodies in their proper place. All bodies that understanding of political and ethical rule.11 The
oppose internal rule are the disruptors of peace, rhizomatic frontier is organic, mechanic, and
terrorists. Thus terrorists can come from quantum Ð a hunk of ginger and swarming ants;
anywhere, from the middle, the edges, from the internet; the Ònow you see it and now you
nowhere. They create strange interior frontiers Ð donÕtÓ nature of SchršdingerÕs cat. The root can
the slum and the ghetto, the internet and the be broken, the nest scattered, data routes

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whistle-blower Ð because the frontier emerges closed, objects disturbed by quantum logics. But
whenever borders are punctured or perforated, each will start again Ð the root now has two
are not secured or recognized. separate surfaces through which it can
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊEven a secure border between rulers is a reconstitute and expand itself; the ants set off in
notional frontier not only because, no matter how search of new crevices; the hacker opens
precise the demarcation, some material space portals; the cat grins. The rhizome does not mind
must hold the demarcating difference between the lattice because it provides a condition for
here and there and between them and us, but spatially unfolding. Put anything in its way and
also because a border and frontier are effects the rhizome simply alters its shape. It absorbs its
and affects of a specific political theology Ð a surroundings and becomes something else
belief that absorbed the realm of the divine into without remorse. It is not cruel but it is without
the function of the lawful border. A worldwide guilt or shame. The rhizome is not what it is but
territorial order had a heavenly seal, a spirit of the multiplicity of its potential becomings. The
justice with its own centers, peripheries, and frontier is merely the nature of its own self-
frontiers. Thus Haiti could be within France, and unfolding. Some believe that this becoming
yet where the application of the rights of man makes the rhizomatic frontier a space of radical
were concerned, it was a frontier. The British motion. In stark contrast to the sovereign and its
could massacre and mourn those who were in frontier, the motion of the rhizome is Òan
the Americas and Australia before it arrived with acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system
its right to create a sovereign order over a without a General and without an organizing
lawless expanse. And the Monroe Doctrine memory or central automaton, defined solely by
allowed the US to declare frontier spheres within a circulation of states.Ó12
spheres within spheres of its own domination. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut perhaps we should not rush too quickly
The sovereign law decides what is border and past the amnesia of the rhizome Ð the fact that it
Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats

what is frontier, when one becomes the other, doesnÕt remember where it started or where it is
when the energies accumulating in the space going. It just goes. This thing, this motion without
where two bodies are pressing against each memory or remorse, can suffocate what it
other should be bracketed or liberated so once encounters as systematically as the sovereign at
again opposing forces and reactions can be set in the frontier Ð even other rhizomatic forms,
e-flux journal #90 Ñ april 2018 Ê Elizabeth A. Povinelli

motion. There is no left or right to this model. motions, and dynamics. What in the concept of
There is only this position against that Ð your the rhizome keeps us from thinking of settler
space and time against mine. colonialism as rhizomatic? In 1492 a Protestant
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMany theorists have struggled to describe rhizome, cleaved from a fibrous unfolding
the space on the other side of the frontier Ð Christian European bulb, floated to the Americas
whether internal or external, whether spaces and began the process of its own
emerging in the wake and the brackets of reterritorializing. This settler rhizome happily
recognition Ð as containing within them threw off its previous form and declared its new
something other than an immanent sovereignty. becoming, a liberation from anything past, a new
How finally to think power and space without Jerusalem, a mode of sociality that was
frontiers and horizons? Perhaps the most widely relentlessly everywhere and anywhere, and
embraced answer has been to think with Deleuze without remorse. It dug in and changed the
and GuattariÕs concept of the rhizome. After all nature of the ecology. Like invasive ants it took
the rhizome, in form and dynamic, as Deleuze advantage of scraps of food offered or left
and Guattari argued, is a decentered network behind. Newtonian physics did not phase it.
analytically exploring space as a method of Every event of opposition provided an
unfolding itself: ÒUnlike a structure, which is opportunity for a swarming. It surrounded what
defined by a set of points and positions É the impeded it and declared the new form to be of its
rhizome is made only of lines: lines of own making. What in the rhizome makes it one
segmentarity and stratification as its side or another in the endless game of espionage
dimensions, and the line of flight or and counterespionage, insurgency and
deterritorialization as the maximum dimension counterinsurgency? Nothing; it has no sides in
after which the multiplicity undergoes the sense of a sovereign border. Hackers happily
metamorphosis, changes in nature.Ó10 Karen hitch a ride on mom and pop businesses,
Barad sees the rhizome as allowing a quantum international corporations, or state agencies. The

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US National Security Agency turns to hackers to the mode and purpose of the movement, the
hack a terroristÕs phone. The frontier is wherever presuppositions about how forms of existence
an opportunity for movement is afforded. are related to each other, are fashioned from
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊʃdouard Glissant long ago noted as much, within each other. The goal is to not become a
distinguishing between forms of rhizomatic state in the face of an invading state. It is to not
rooting. It is not rooting per se that presents the grab an anthropologist to act as your diplomat

07/08
problem, but totalitarian rootings and the across ontological and cultural borders. Indeed,
overdetermined conditions of nomadism: diplomats create state-effects Ð they create the
state they claim to be speaking on behalf of in
Take, for example, circular nomadism: each global meetings. Pierre Clastres registered an
time a portion of the territory is exhausted, ongoing refusal on the part of his interlocutors
the group moves around. Its function is to among the Guayaki in Paraguay to not become a
ensure the survival of the group by means state simply as a reaction to being confronted by
of this circularity. This is the nomadism a colonizing one.17 Contemporary critical
practiced by populations that move from theorists like Audra Simpson, Glen Coulthard,
one part of the forest to another, by the and Aileen Moreton-Robinson have amplified a
Arawak communities who navigated from formation of human and nonhuman belonging
island to island in the Caribbean, by hired that refuses the frontier options Ð to be a
laborers in their pilgrimage from farm to sovereign state against other sovereign states or
farm, by circus people in their to be the unruly frontier of a sovereign
peregrinations from village to village, all of expansion.18
whom are driven by some specific need to ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAcross all of these works the question it is
move, in which daring or aggression play no not Newtonian or quantum physics, nor the
part. Circular nomadism is a not-intolerant confrontation between two equal or unequal
form of an impossible settlement.13 forces, nor the unrooted movement of
infelicitous unfoldings (nor of militant fidelity to
But Òthe Huns, for example, or the specific movements or confrontations). The
ConquistadorsÓ perfected an Òinvading question is how routes and worlds and how
nomadismÓ whose goal was to Òconquer lands by extimate existences are enhanced or sacked by
exterminating their occupants.Ó14 As if they were forms and imaginaries of movement. How does
Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats

the advanced runners of a spreading plague from this thickened space come to force other regions
which they believe themselves to be immune, to conform to its way of existing? What kinds of
Òconquerors are the moving, transient root of trailings, seedings, separations, and connections
their people.Ó15 These followers would root down are left along the way as entire infrastructures
into the charred landscape, claiming it as pull stuff back and forth? How compacted is the
e-flux journal #90 Ñ april 2018 Ê Elizabeth A. Povinelli

property, fencing and commodifying it in a new material? What embankments are formed in the
form of conquest Ð the conquest of private process? Where does the stuff of these
cultivation. embankments come from? What indentations
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOf course the conquerors were not immune. are left behind? Europe did not predate the
As GlissantÕs fellow Martiniquean, AimŽ CŽsaire, history of its multifaceted and violent
wrote, the virus would soon turn and consume dispossession of other modes of existence.
them, but not before much else of the world had Europe was not a value that spread or failed to
been lost: ÒEach time a head is cut off or an eye spread its message globally. As W. E. B. Du Bois
put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the and Frantz Fanon argued, Europe, and by
fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France extension the US, Canada, New Zealand,
they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, etc., built
tortured and in France they accept the fact, itself from externalizing its expansion into and
civilization acquires another dead weight, a onto the bodies of others. It ate up and shat out
universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets others elsewhere than it claimed to be. The
in, a center of infection begins to spreadÓ and Congo was not in the Congo but in the shiny
the poison seeps Òinto the veins of EuropeÓ such streets of Brussels; Congolese spirits haunt the
that Òslowly but surely, the continent proceeds streets of Europe, built as it is from their lands,
toward savagery.Ó16 This savagery began and bodies, and worlds. As Aileen Moreton-
continues against forms of existence that are Robertson points to in her reading of Critical
thrown over the other side of the frontier, thrown Indigenous Theory against Critical Race Theory
overboard as the privileged steam toward the and Whiteness Studies, the modality by which
horizon. These are overwhelming brown and race was used to exterminate and dispossess
black bodies, the subaltern and the indigenous, actual native peoples provided one condition for
interned in the brackets of recognition. Thus it is another modality in which different black and
not the sovereign or the rhizome that matter but brown people were dispossessed of their bodies

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to labor for others. Thus a differential but shared ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1
Quoted in Fred Reinhard
relationship exists between the extractive Dallmayr, Small Wonder: Global
machinery of Western privilege and the Power and Its Discontents
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2005),
epistemologies and ontologies that legitimate 185.
this privilege. And it is within these spaces that a ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2
refusal to be either horizon or frontier continues. JŸrgen Habermas, Between Fact
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ16
AimŽ CŽsaire, Discourse on
Colonialism, trans. Joan
Pinkham (Monthly Review Press,
1972), 35Ð36.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ17
Pierre Clastres, Society Against

08/08
and Norm (MIT Press, 1996). the State: Essays in Political
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ× Anthropology, trans. Robert
All drawings by the author. ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3 Hurley (Zone Books, 1989).
Christina Sharpe, In the Wake:
On Blackness and Being (Duke ÊÊÊÊÊÊ18
University Press, 2016). ƒdouard Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The
Glissant famously described this White Possessive: Property,
wake as consisting of three Power, and Indigenous
abysses that Africans faced as Sovereignty, (University of
they entered the hull of the slave Minnesota Press, 2015).
ship: the abyss of the belly of
the boat itself, the abyss of the
seas where many were cast
overboard, and the abyss of
memory as their traditions
receded under the viciousness
of removal. See Glissant, The
Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy
White (University of Michigan
Press, 1997).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4
Elizabeth A. Povinelli.
Economies of Abandonment
(Duke University Press, 2011).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ5
Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The
Cunning of Recognition (Duke
University Press, 2002).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ6
Mabo v. Queensland (No. 2),
(1992).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ7
Denise Ferreira da Silva, Toward
Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats

a Global Idea of Race (University

of Minnesota Press, 2007).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8
Elizabeth A. Povinelli, ÒAfter the
Last Man: Images and Ethics of
Becoming Otherwise,Ó e-flux
journal 35 (May 2012)
e-flux journal #90 Ñ april 2018 Ê Elizabeth A. Povinelli

http://www.e-flux.com/journa
l/35/68380/after-the-last-ma n-
images-and-ethics-of-becom
ing-otherwise/.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9
Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of
Justice: Disability, Nationality,
Species Membership (Belknap
Press, 2007).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10
Gilles Deleuze and FŽlix
Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
trans. Brian Massumi (University
of Minnesota Press, 1987), 8.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11
Karen Barad, Meeting the
Universe Half Way: Quantum
Physics and the Entanglement of
Matter and Meaning (Duke
University Press, 2007).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ12
Deleuze and FŽlix Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus, 19.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ13
Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 12.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ14
Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 12.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ15
Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 14.

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