PART III: Edges

An "edge" can be both noun and verb. Edges may be the sharp meeting points or vertices between planes. Edges can also be lines, boundaries, or borders at which things terminate; brinks or verges; narrow surfaces of thin, flat objects. Edges can refer to sharpness - of appetite, irritation, drive, desire, or voice, for example. They can be fuzzy: their sharpness bled out like lines of ink on blotting paper, their acuity rendered vague, their meaning unsettled or complicated. Enacted, edges are qualities we may give to a project, a pitch, or a campaign; or they may be slow advances towards things - such as ships towards a coastline. Edginess may be ontological. The edges considered in the chapters that follow - bodies, boats, shores, and seabeds - are all of these and more. They highlight territory as a political technology simultaneously reproduced and challenged by individuals as they engage space's dynamic materiality.