this idea that every piece of land on the Earth’s landmass has to be occupied by a distinct unit, and that each of these units has to meet XYZ criteria with no exceptions. I talk in the book about holdovers like the Knights of Malta, a Catholic order that dates back to the Crusades. It isn’t a country. It doesn’t control any territory. It doesn’t have citizens. It does have, for complicated reasons, diplomatic relations with dozens of other countries and an observer office at the UN. This is a sort of holdover from an older model of sovereignty. You could look at the Mohawk nation that I visited—a country that predated our current era of countries—that is trying to maintain its political independence. The invisible countries are places that our current framework, our current map of the world, doesn’t recognize or can’t fit into its predetermined categories.
OAM: Many of the places you talk about deal with geography that’s a subset or part of other countries. Are there places on Earth that don’t belong to any nation anywhere? JK: There are. Not many. One example would be Antarctica. I write in the book about a project called Liberland, where Libertarian activists have claimed a piece of territory between Serbia and Croatia that neither country wants. They physically planted a flag there. They take applications for citizenship, and they have this idea that they’re going to build an autonomous political community there, where radical libertarian economic and political ideas can be given free reign. There are a couple of those places. Some people have ideas about building small states on oil rigs or sea steads. It is hard to find territory these days that at least one country doesn’t claim.
OAM: For years, national borders have been established by wars or international agreements, but now OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2018-19 / WINTER
global warming might have a role in determining or changing a nation’s borders. What would the impact of that be? Would it necessarily lead to more conflict?
POEM
Floating Heart BY STUART FRIEBERT
JK: One of the places I discuss in the book is an island in the central Pacific called Carabass. It’s one of the countries most threatened by sea level rise. It’s also a country that has started to think about whether it will be possible to maintain some kind of political sovereignty or independence if the entire population has to relocate. A country more than anything else is a piece of land, so what happens when the land associated with a political unit no longer exists? We don’t have a framework for what that looks like. It’s an issue we’ll unfortunately probably face as some of these smaller island states are threatened by the effects of climate change.
Loves a shallow pond, spreads
OAM: Was there anything that particularly surprised you in your research?
catch the pickerel lurking underneath,
JK: When I started out, I was more sympathetic to the idea of separatism; I didn’t see why we were so attached to maintaining the map of the world the way it is. I thought that more places that are seeking self determination should be allowed to do so. It seems like a very democratic idea. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that there are not many examples of peaceful partitions in history. Czechoslovakia. Examples like Yugoslavia, or the partition of India, are much more common. And in a lot of the places I visited, places where claims for independence make a lot of sense and where some problems might be solved, new conflicts will be created. There tend not to be neat little units of people who agree to be part of a country together, that you can just draw a new international border and solve problems. I definitely understand more why there is reluctance to question borders as they exist.
its tiny white flowers over broad leaves; and proceeds till it covers the whole surface, sometimes in just one summer. If you’re foolish enough to turn it over, look for the heart, legend has it you’ll not only not
you’ll quarrel with those you love, cry yourself to sleep with worry; and in the morning head nude and cold for the old rowboat, tied to a stump; climb aboard, paddle quickly out to the middle, then float back slowly ashore in a wooden coffin, when the pickerel goes belly up. From the book Floating Heart, one of 15 books of poems published by Friebert and the winner of the 2015 Ohioana Poetry Award. Friebert, the cofounder of Field Magazine, the Field Translation Series, and Oberlin College Press, has also published 15 volumes of translation, anthologies, and prose. Pinyon Publishing released his most recent translation, Between Question & Answer: Selected Poems of Ute von Funcke, in 2018. 13