Borges: Inventor of the Internets

Noam Cohen writes in today's NYTimes, "The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges might seem an unlikely candidate for Man Who Discovered the Internet." Nevertheless, numerous contemporary commentators are seeing compelling connections between Borges's great Ficciones and various Web 2.0 developments, and his amazing writings seem to be garnering new interest from futurists and web theorists alike. The article's listing of specific arguments for the writings of "Cy-Borges" as prophetic is too good to miss.

derridirred

Derrida writes, "[...] Helene Cixous means to leave all or part of her dream memoirs to the BNF" (25). The dream seems a good location from which to spin my reverie on Derrida's reverie on Cixous's reverie, read while I slipped in and out of reverie myself. Well, the first 'reverie' is a stretch of definition, but the spinning of phrasiology is inspired by the master himself. My reading of Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, & Genius occured after a weekend of little sleep, leaving me in a state of drifting consciousness. On one hand, this is the precise place from which to read this text, one so slippery in location, twirling around itself, refusing to be pinned down.

The dream as a representation of truth is slippery. It can be an archive of consciousness, translated into an order unbeknownst to us, like Borges' Chinese encyclopedia, with pieces of the day transposed with what was on TV while falling asleep, or the phrases of the text where I dozed, continuing the text in a dream-state (which sounds remarkably like Derrida's voice). I've switched pronouns, gone from collective to singular, self to other.

The notion of genius is equally slippery. If you know you're a genius, you can't possibly be a genius, unless you are trying to be an evil genius. I've heard a similar argument for coolness...

Midnight's Structure

How can we understand Midnight’s Children in light of Foucault’s understanding of the archive? Let’s start with Foucault.

Foucault considers the construction of the archive from the bottom – the base of structure that organizes and creates order. In the introduction to The Order of Things, Foucault states:

[...]I am concerned here with observing how a culture experiences the propinquity of things, how it establishes the tabula of their relationships and the order by which they must be considered. (xxiv)

He writes here of understanding the archaeology of culture, that which is used to create order and thus understanding within a culture. The tabula is the ground from which items can be compared/contrasted/discriminated, thus establishing order and meaning. In this exploration of archaeologies, Foucault turns to two works of fiction as exemplars of both the arbitrary construction of this order and the way in which it is transmitted. In Order, he begins by considering Borges’ Chinese encyclopedia with its seemingly odd categorization of creatures, emphasizing the archive as arbitrary and constructed. In Language, counter-memory, practice, he explicates Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, paying particular attention to the construction of the fantastic and the positioning of Temptation among, within, and encompassing other books/works. Here, he considers the construction of the library through repetition:

Only the assiduous clamor created by repetition can transmit to us what only happened once. The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is a phenomenon of the library. (91)

Thus repetition also works as establishing a ground for order, reasserting events or concepts to create new meaning in the spaces between.

Foucault is concerned throughout with the places where things touch, the intervals that exist between theses spaces, and how these delineations then create order and meaning for a culture. Juxtaposing this structure with Rushdie’s novel both establishes and validates Saleem Sinai’s assertions, offering clarity – a map or path – through the winding narrative.

Determining the archeology of culture is precisely the task of Saleem Sinai as narrator of Midnight's Children. His story is quite literally that of India, both in his telling (allowing ownership and shaping of the story) and in the intertwining of his life (and the lives of his family members) with the political developments of his country. This order is established in the first lines of the novel when Sinai outlines several important incidents in the story of his life - his birth at the stroke of midnight; the synchronicity of this with the rebirth of India as an independent nation; the importance of his nose, nicknames, and snot. This moment passes almost immediately into the past, with the retelling of his grandfather's history, again, with special emphasis on the nose.

In and of itself, this is not a terribly unusual beginning for any story; in Foucauldian terms, though, this lays the first table, establishing some categories for understanding the novel. Autobiographical stories are also often begun with the very beginning - the moment of birth, perhaps even the circumstances of that moment, which later serve to reveal something of someone's life. But this structure is repeated throughout the novel, both through the recurring themes (of noses, progeny, snot) and in the literal structure of preview (and later repetition of these important points).

Thus the winding narrative which constantly folds back upon itself is, in a Borges-ish way, very much an ordered archive.

Rushdie and Borges: threads, trust, and whatnot

Rushdie carries and weaves threads across 500+ pages and Borges does so predominantly within chapters, but both are amazing at setting up 'ethereal' threads: ideas, concepts, issues, or statements that don’t physically exist in other parts of the story but have perpetual effects on the way one reads or interprets. For example, in the beginning of Midnight’s Children Saleem says, “I must commence the business of remaking my life” (4). So, from the outset we know there is the possibility of this not being entirely truthful—that he is “remaking” things. But another line, “In a kind of collective failure of imagination, we learned that we simply could not think our way out of our pasts” (131) implies a sense of unavoidable truth…indicating that he (they) would have it different if they could. Similarly, the opening story in Labryinths is about a conspiracy to create a fictional world and make it part of the “real”. Plus, the story of The Garden of Forking Paths tells us about a book/labyrinth. Both give us uncertainties to work with throughout their texts, perhaps knowing that the uncertainty would/could point us to some other understanding.

In addition to these things, Borges’ narrators as well as Rushdie’s Saleem have similar styles—a perpetual uncertain trustworthiness. You want to believe them, need to believe them, but know you can’t believe them in totality. That uncertainty, and their awareness of it, produces similar authorial tones.

But more than that, they have direct correlations; in the chapter Funes the Memorious Borges writes, “The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things” (92 in my text). This seems to me to echo the actions of the narrator of Rushdie’s work: Saleem, always trying to put off things—to put off telling parts of the story—as well as his own awareness of immortality. Plus, Funes creates his own system for classifying all the information he takes in—one which is not based on any preexisting system—and Saleem works similarly once he gains his incredible sense of smell (one that allows him to categorize smells that not everyone can smell—i.e., anger).

Any number of connections can be drawn between these two authors and we can examine their works in a variety of lights, but it seems to me that what stares at me the most is that I’m not sure how (or from what lens) to approach these two texts. They tend to work in the spaces between literature, history, philosophy, social commentary, and such. It’s a merging of styles to create.

The and and the in of Squirl.

Have you encountered Squirl? It is described here. I am wondering if it might provide a non-linguistic place where animals "(i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush" might meet? Or is it a linguistic space? And could we say, "Squirl rebuilds the and of the enumeration by making impossible the in where the things enumerated would be divided up"?

Greetings.

There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of years it becomes a mere chapter—if not a paragraph or a name—in the history of philosophy. In literature, this eventual caducity is even more notorious. The Quixote—Menard told me—was, above all, an entertaining book; now it is the occasion for patriotic toasts, grammatical insolence and obscene de luxe editions. Fame is a form of incomprehension, perhaps the worst.