The Inhabitable Border

Beyond universalism and particularism

Abstract

This paper proposes the hypothesis of the idea of border as a metaphor which allows us to go beyond Manichean proposals such as “universalism vs. particularism”. First, we consider the ambivalence of the concept of border, then discuss three kinds of universalism as opposed to three types of particularism with reference to current debate on the topic. Finally, we recover the idea of the border as a habitat, following Todorov, Carrithers, Canclini and Trías