'Spatial Play' at the Ends of Europe: Oyapock Bridge, Amazonia. (April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kramsch, Olivier Thomas
• Other Names: Mamadouh Virginie guestEditor.; Bialasiewicz Luiza guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie. Volume 107:Number 2(2016)
• Page Start: 209
• Page End: 213
• Publication Date: 2016-04
• Subjects: spatial play -- utopia -- French Guiana -- Brazil -- Oyapock River -- European postcolonial border studies; Economic geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; 330.9005
• DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12179
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0040-747X

Abstract

Abstract: Drawing on the work of philosopher‐semiotician Louis Marin, this contribution to Outlook on Europe reveals the 'spatial play' of contending outlooks hovering fitfully over the construction of a bridge at the 'ends of Europe', in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, on that very spot where French Guiana and Brazil, the European Union and Mercosul, physically touch one another over a muddy tributary, the Rio Oyapock . The inter‐play of visions colliding around the Oyapock bridge, it is argued, illuminates the paradoxes and contradictions of European territorial governance in the globalised time‐space of its postcolonial frontiers. In spite of the high geopolitical rhetoric seeking to unite both continents, the peculiar blindness of Europe's metropolitan gaze vis‐à‐vis indigenous difference sets the stage for perverse effects of exclusion and disempowerment in and around the site of the bridge itself, extending far into its regional hinterlands. Framed against the backdrop of a long, 'utopian' modernity of European imperial expansion and territorial conquest, the ghostly spatial dynamics surrounding the Oyapock River bridge project serve to illuminate wider challenges to the projection of EU influence 'in the world'. A close examination of similar dynamics elsewhere may help bring into focus the lineaments of a more fully confident and mature postcolonial European border studies.