Temporal border

Temporal borders are borders on the plane of time: they divide between different periods. When constituted as border zones they tend to exhibit the characteristics of liminality.

For individuals, typical temporal borders are those of birth, subject formation, initiation, marriage, divorce, childbirth, changes in economic circumstances, imprisonment, liberation, exile, homecoming, death, etc. For collectives, temporal borders are typically historical events: national awakenings, wars, revolutions, constitutions, migrations, etc.

In border poetics, temporal borders have a central role, as they are central elements in all narrative, and because they often coincide with topographic, symbolic, epistemological and textual borders on the plane of the text. Every border crossing is a temporal border, dividing time into a period before the crossing and a period after the crossing.

Temporal borders are a sub-set of symbolic borders, in the sense that they can also be expressed as oppositions such as before/after, married/unmarried, child/adult/ being/non-being, etc.

The present is a border and a border zone between the past and the future, and because it is a zone, we can also talk of a temporal border between the present and the past, or the present and the future.

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