ABSTRACT
Unlike introductions, afterwords to books are in the pleasant position of addressing those who have already read the text and who, presumably, have found the material interesting enough to finish. But to find something interesting does not necessarily mean one finds it serious or useful, something that might productively alter one’s own way of thinking. Perhaps the value offered is merely that of entertainment: The book might have been worth reading as a pleasant but trifling diversion, as a sort of postmodern Wunderkammer, a cabinet of curiosities taken from exotic but unimportant places like Sumba and Surinam that has been assembled during the decade of post-Cold War globalization for the amusement of intellectuals who have a taste for such things. Or is there something of real substance to be gained by reading the nine essays of this collection and thinking one’s way into the notion of “border fetishisms” that they develop? This is the question I would like to consider in this afterword.
