While some inroads have certainly been made into probing the connections between the concept of the border of the state and questions about violence, sovereignty and power, especially as border studies has shifted in its focus from geopolitics to biopolitics, the richness of bordering practices in contemporary political life stands in contrast to the relative poverty with which borders continue to be conceptualised and theorised. For this reason my analysis of the concept of the border of the state now turns away from the literature in IR and related disciplines to investigate the prospects for gathering critical resources from elsewhere. In many ways following the broader trajectory towards biopolitical border studies, I will suggest that there is a wealth of hitherto underexploited resources for problematising the concept of the border of the state, as well as the concept of the border itself more generally, within what is often referred to as ‘poststructuralist’ thought. Indeed, as this and subsequent chapters will show, despite the diverse and heterogeneous nature of poststructuralism, it is possible to identify a common interest concerning border problématiques in a general sense throughout a range of critical social, political and philosophical thinkers associated with that term. With this in mind, the analysis aims both to highlight the insights of post-structuralism for thinking about border politics as well as using this theme to encounter, push and illustrate the limitations of the thinkers under consideration.