Estados Amurallados

Why, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, are so many nations building sophisticated walls on their borders? What do these new walls mean in symbolic, material and physical terms? Wendy Brown reflects on the proliferation of walls at a time when transnational powers and global connectivity have intensified. According to Brown, the new walls mark the limits, existing or desired, of nation states, but they do not become fortresses against invading armies or even manifestations of national sovereignty. Rather, they consecrate the same border corruption that they would like to prevent and represent, in a theatrical way, a sovereignty that has entered into an irreversible crisis.