Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 3, Spring 2020 | Page 17

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
The U.S.–Mexico border in previous times has been more porous and hence a site of
greater cultural ambiguity (Anzaldua 1987). This ambiguity shows that borders do not
cleanly divide nations (as Nail (2016) might say) but rather as borderlands divide the
border area from both nations. In other words, people from South Texas felt divided
from most of U.S. citizens because of their ties to Mexico and people from Northern
Mexico may feel similar distance from Mexico City and proximity to the United States
(Martínez 1994). However, this is not simply cultural, but ethical because the division
that Nail (2016) mentions is not simply conceptual or legal, but inscribed through violence
upon the bodies and psyches of borderlands residents. This, according to Anzaldua
(1987), occurs through state violence�such as police brutality�and other means, and
makes the border rather like an open wound between U.S. and Mexican people. According
to Bosniak (2006:1–4), there is a divide in nation-states between the violent policing
of immigration and the relative acceptance available for some immigrants. This somewhat
parallels Brown’s (2010) reading of Carl Schmidt where people within a nation can
expect to be treated well whereas anything goes for those outside, especially colonized
people. Thus, whether situated in democracy or fascism, borders divide privileged sectors
of the population from the violence that their nation-state inflict on others.
As borders become actual walls, they reveal “paradoxes” between democratic wishes
and nationalist reality: “one featuring simultaneous opening and blocking, one featuring
universalization, and one featuring networked and virtual power met by physical barricades”
(Brown 2010:20). “What is also striking about these new barriers is that even
as the limn or attempt to define nation-state boundaries, they are not built as defences
against potential attacks by sovereigns, as fortress against invading armies, or even as
shields against weapons launched in interstate wars” (Brown 2010:21).
Deleuze’s theory of the time-image (1989) can illuminate how borders, as divisions, obscure
reality. Deleuze’s theories mostly focused on issues other than borders; however,
he specifically looked at how time creates safe zones and dangerous zones. Deleuze’s explanation
of time as spatial and visible as “sheets of time” is applicable not just to cinema,
but also to the two-dimensional space of murals. The reason is that time can be mixed
up in ways that are visible in a two-dimensional sense, rather than as an abstract concept
(Deleuze 1989:123). While Deleuze thought that film was the most effective medium
to accomplish this, he also thought that it was possible in other mediums too. Deleuze
hesitated to apply the time-image to other mediums because he thought they focused
too much on “recollection” whereas time-image film mixes the past into the present and
future, rather than simply remembering it as a completed event (1989:124). This is a
point where Deleuze may have overgeneralized other mediums or simply not focused
on non-Western mediums that take history more seriously. The murals analysed here do
not use past as a traumatic or nostalgic memory, but rather as a guide and catalyst for the
present and future. Their images mix times up, rather than relying on words to explain.
Therefore, the time-image can be applied to two-dimensional artwork like Chicana/o
murals. Yet, what do we gain from analysing murals as time-images?
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