Have you ever wondered, as millions of refugees are displaced by climate change and the US builds walls to keep them out, what we’re all supposed to do about it? How do we collaborate directly with those most in need, both intellectually and materially?
In this course, we will read my creative nonfiction book Border Hacker (available both in text and audiobook formats), which was co-written with an undocumented migrant and computer hacker, Axel Kirschner, who was kidnapped in Mexico and forced to hack government officials. We will discuss the ethical stakes of working with people without documents, and what it means to collaborate with migrants in order to “hack” different borders together. This could be a national border, such as the US-Mexico border, but also a border within literature—a craft invested in the border between fact and fiction—as well as even more fundamental borders, such as the distinction between the self and the other. We will explore how certain societies and selves come to be bordered, and how those borders can be reinforced and militarized, as well as renegotiated or dismantled entirely.