Abstract

RAUSSERT, Wilfred. Inter-American Border Discourses, Heterotopia, And Translocal Communities In Courtney Hunt's Film Frozen River. Norteamérica [online]. 2011, vol.6, n.1, pp.15-33. ISSN 2448-7228.

This essay discusses the multifaceted and symbolic representations of border and borderlands in Courtney Hunt's debut film Frozen River (2008). Using Foucault's concept of heterotopia as the point of departure, the article discusses the borderlands of Mohawk territory between the U.S. and Canada as progressive spaces and contact zones where levels of individual and psychological borders intersect with the geopolitical border, marked by two nations and an autonomous Mohawk reserve, in their impact on translocal community building. In particular, it focuses on the development of the relationship between the film's two female protagonists as a reflection on shifting border discourses in times of global migration and on how individual fates are inextricably linked within local transboundary culture and its political and cultural processes.

Keywords : border; heterotopia; mobility; agency; transethnic; translocal.