The binary way in which we are taught to think about the Iron Curtain that Longo points out in the first chapter, I think, is a tendency that extends across a lot of the ways in which we think about policies surrounding immigration. Too often narratives like the organizers of the picnic, officials within the government that were helping the organizers, what Longo terms \u201ca shadow archive of secret decisions,\u201d and kind strangers that are seemingly encountered through happenstance, like Norbert, are lost to these broader narratives that fit the political agenda or narrative of the times. As I was thinking through what it meant to introduce personal narratives that complicate these historical monoliths, I found myself continuing to return to this idea of \u201ctruth\u201d in journalism and ethnography. I think often in an investigative or archival piece there is a tendency to pursue what we conceptualize as \u201cobjective truth.\u201d But I appreciated the fact that Longo paid equal attention to \u201cpersonal truths\u201d in capturing the border\u2014that is, what the border meant to the people in his stories, rather than simply focusing on the border\u2019s physical or political qualities.<\/p>\n
I do think, however, that there are limits to fully capturing \u201cpersonal truths,\u201d particularly when you are an outsider looking in. This idea is illustrated in the section where Longo drives to Lake Fert\u0151 in an attempt to experience what the border meant to the Hungarians at that time. While Longo describes the geographic features of the lake, there are limits to how \u201caccurately\u201d a writer can describe any given experience that is not their own. The limits of our ability as journalists to totally empathize or understand the experiences of the people that we study, and how to address or confront those limits was another lingering question that I had. I\u2019m also curious to know what Professor Longo, as well as others in the class, think about what the Lake Fert\u0151 symbolized. To me, it seemed as though it was a place in which the people of Sopron, and later the Hungarians, were able to enjoy a limited form of freedom, yet simultaneously served as a reminder that the border was insurmountable\u2014that it could be maintained without the barbed wire or fencing.<\/p>\n
I also found Longo’s choice to write himself into parts of the book interesting. Particularly where L\u00e1szl\u00f3 expresses to Longo the challenges of the project: \u201cOne of the challenges of your project, he says, is going to be to capture how crazy it was in those days.\u201d I appreciated the fact that the book used these interludes to capture the limitations of the Project as well as how Longo went about gathering information.<\/p>\n
I also found the idea of the border as both a physical and imagined object as particularly compelling. The line, \u201cthe East, the Iron Curtain soon became an uncrossable divide, powerful not just in its scale, but also in the mythology that justified its rule,\u201d as well as the fact that Simone\u2019s family had never previously seen the border or even knew where it was before crossing it particularly capture this point. I appreciated the fact that the reading captured not just the physical qualities of the border but its inherent ideological qualities as well.\u00a0 As we look at different immigration policies throughout the semester, I am particularly excited to explore these two dimensions of what borders physically are and what they mean to the people who cross and maintain them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The binary way in which we are taught to think about the Iron Curtain that Longo points out in the first chapter, I think, is a tendency that extends across a lot of the ways in which we think about policies surrounding immigration. Too often narratives like the organizers of the picnic, officials within the<\/p>\n