Resisting Borders in Thomas King's "Borders" and Ghassan Kanafani's "Returning to Haifa"

The aim of this study is to show one of the major characteristics of resistance literature, which is resisting borders, in two fictional short stories, "Borders" by Thomas King and "Returning to Haifa" by Ghassan Kanafani, discussing how both works have tackled the concept of resisting borders as a form of resistance which the colonized people might apply to confront their colonizers and affirm their identity. The study sheds light on the relationship between settler colonialism and creating borders. Analyzing the two literary texts shows how the physical and psychological borders have come to embody the powerful position of the colonizer and represent a challenge to the colonized Natives. The findings point out that resisting physical borders permits the colonized Natives to affirm their nativism, enter the contact zone with their colonizers, and get rid of many of the psychological barriers which have been made by colonialism. Resisting the physical and psychological borders represents the struggle, which some colonized people have to face to declare their rejection to an unfair situation and rediscover themselves after reconsidering their relation with the colonizers.