002 · Borders

10 Apr, 2026

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New studies of life writing that think of border crossings in a larger sense—not only between nations but between languages, genres, texts, and epitexts—have much to tell us about the intersections of self, society, storytelling, and the world.¹

The initial question was whether a scholarly text could cross into the personal and still retain academic rigour. Whether that fluidity could say something about mixed ancestry. Nationality. Inheritance.

At first, I considered multiple languages. The dialects I grew up with. Afrikaans. German. Cape Town slang. I abandoned that plan for the reader’s sake. The thought was to use footnotes as passage. Translation at the edge of the page.

Then the larger question.

Could a text move between voices and styles without collapse. Surreal dream sequences. Journal entries. Notes from the Barthes reading group. Rigorous academic prose. Theory. Philosophy. Sarcasm. Irony. Self-deprecation. Poetry. Banal description. Truth. Lies. Flash creative non-fiction. Micro creative non-fiction. Visual analysis.

Could I write South Africa without saying too much. Travel without producing travel writing. Loss, pain, drugs—without heaviness, yet without evasion.

Could the same text hold a catalogue of quotations. A personal study of Roland Barthes. Private research on Walter Benjamin. A manifesto for photo-sketching. An insistence on three recurring terms: the photo, the fragment, drift / barre oblique.

Could it all hold.