Transboundary Europe through a West African Looking Glass: Cross-Border Integration, “Colonial Difference” and the Chance for “Border Thinking”

The authors base themselves on the epistemologic perspective on borders to reinterpret Euro-African border regions. In this respect, they refer to the notion of exteriority and to Mignolo’s modern/colonial global system. Based on a report by the West African Borders and Integration (WABI) initiative, they describe the transformation of border relations between Africa and Europe and broaden Mignolo’s theory (p. 95).
Brambilla and Kramsch argue in favour of a reclassification of European borders and of cross-border interactions within a global geopolitical narrative. Walter Mignolo’s work is groundbreaking in this field, as he considers borders and associated practices against the backdrop of global colonial and post-colonial relations (p. 96). Therefore, the authors initially illustrate Mignolo’s theory before pointing out several points of criticism which they develop through their West-African example.
Mignolo introduces two border-related problematics which refer to the effects of the colonial mapping based on the borders decided by Western rulers. For Mignolo, the transformation of a modern global system as theorised by Immanuel Wallerstein into a modern/colonial global system constitutes a critical step towards decolonialism. The modern/colonial global system is essentially determined by borders. These borders of the modern geopolitical system constitute places of exteriority, and are results and effects of colonial expansion and of differentiation (p. 97). As part of this process, the recognition of the colonial difference requires, as part of a secondary perspective, a way to think borders over, i.e. an epistemologic practice able to identify tense moments between local history and hegemonic knowledge systems (p. 101). For Mignolo, the way to think borders over is a decolonialist project, as it derives from the exteriority representing what is external and what was created from the inside.
The authors criticise the fact that Mignolo’s modern/colonial global system continues to locate the production of knowledge in Western Europe or within the EU, despite the fact that Eurocentric views can now be observed throughout the world (p. 98). They find his understanding of exteriority to be too static, as it remains within a logic of opposition between internal and external concepts. They also think that Mignolo does not sufficiently theorise the place of exteriority (p.102). Building on their idea of thinking borders over, the authors attempt to understand in what manner the concept of cross-border Europe was mobilised in these local and post-colonial environments in West Africa (p. 103).
The authors base themselves on their WABI report analysis to demonstrate that Eurocentric knowledge is also likely to be located outside Europe. Likewise, what is “exterior” to Europe can be implied otherwise than as part of an emancipation approach, as relations between Europe and its many “exteriors” are far more complex than Mignolo’s exteriority concept suggests (p. 98).
In 2007, WABI expressed an interest in organising an African-European conference, offering both regions the opportunity to learn from one another, as well as about their cross-border interactions and cooperations (p. 107). For the authors, WABI’s perspective is an “Euro-optimism of the will” (p. 108f). The WABI report creates an utopian narrative for Europe, which ignores academic literature by European researchers on borders; these researchers essentially focus on the difficulties and issues inherent to political, cultural and economic cross-border integration in Europe. The article concludes by broadening Mignolo’s theory, which aims to offer a more flexible view of how borders can be thought over, as well as of colonial differences and exteriority.