Thinking Borderlessness: Alternative Forms of Embodiment and Reconfiguration of Spatial Realities in Emma Donoghue’s Room

Jayana Jain Punamiya, 

Marie Curie ITN ESR CoHaB 

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany 

Abstract

Borders and boundaries are not limited to the domain of geography. The discourse and metaphor of borders extend beyond geopolitical to sociological, biological, affective, linguistic, racial, gender concerns and so on. They regulate power as they enforce a spatial code yet are always unsettled. Thus, any instance of border-crossing contests power and leads to the tentative creation of alternative forms of resistance. In this article, I argue that Emma Donoghue’s Room (2010) depicts a variety of cross-border assemblages that contain the flow of corporeal, bio-political, and affective borders within traumatic and larger social spaces. This, in turn, leads to the tentative creation of alternative affective communities and resistance to dominant power structures.

Key words: Borders, Spatiality, Affect, Trauma, Power, Resistance