Josefina Alvarez (2006) suggests that borders are the very “walls of the edifice of the state, separating inside from outside.” Security discourses “name dangers;” define enemies. As long as an enemy exists, the nation exist. The idea of a nation cannot be separated from the idea of an enemy. Nations exist to wage a struggle to eliminate enemies. 

War and genocide may be thought of as a response to “infections:” diseases that may enter and endanger the body politic. War and genocide are psychosomatic phenomena. 

Enemies are experienced--no matter how distant from the self--as if contained within one's body. War and genocide are social movements seeking to maintain the health of a national organism: a struggle against pathogens.

According to Paul Kahn (2013), the idea of the enemy is constructed based on a perspective on territory: “The enemy penetrates the border.” This transgression—penetrating the border—makes someone an enemy even if he does relatively little harm and regardless of whether he damages public or private property.

Borders represent the integrity of the state.  The border becomes a geographical representation of national existence. A cross-border threat, regardless of how limited, motivates an extreme response. After 9/11, the United States went into a frenzy of border protection.

Everything follows from the equation of one’s own body with a body politic. The individual projects his or her own body into the external world—experiencing himself or herself as a body politic. Put differently, the individual internalizes the idea of the nation into himself—imagining that his nation exists within his own body.