Deniz Güvensoy

Deniz Guvensoy argues that the border performs itself in a paradoxical counter-turning, which simultaneously enables and endangers binary oppositions in the political space. The term "aporia" (impasse, non-passage) is employed to define this transformative counter-turning, testing the passage through an established border. This performance pronounces the concept's limit and helps it to reconstitute itself. Güvensoy analyzes case studies from the political urban space of Istanbul to understand this complex process. She takes the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul as a metaphorical border, a performative space that symbolizes and haunts the union of the so-called Eastern (traditional, conservative) and the Western (secular, modern) values. She also contends that the body is part of the border regime, whose performances reproduce the aporetic structure of the border.