Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Analytic Philosophy and Representation by Silvia G. Dapía

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Analytic Philosophy and Representation by Silvia G. Dapía Rolando Pérez Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Analytic Philosophy and Representation Routledge, 2016 by Silvia G. Dapía The interest in Borges in the United States developed sometime in the early 1980s. Though most of his writings for which he is known, like Ficciones and The Aleph, preceded the so-called Latin American Boom, his work primarily gained recognition during the years of the "Boom." However, in contrast to Boom generation writers like García Márquez and Julio Cortázar, Borges, a self-avowed "conservative" was not a politically engaged intellectual. The "revolutionary" aspect of his writings was wholly aesthetic. He was viewed as a writer, who had chosen metaphysical, speculative thought over politics. And this is the Borges that Silvia G. Dapía captures so well in her deeply profound monograph, Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Analytic Philosophy and Representation (2016). For example, Schopenhauer's "concept of the will and the illusory nature of the individual" gave Borges, writes Dapía, the means "to deny the existence of the independent individual and, with it, any reflection on historical responsibility" (170). And it was precisely this kind of social disengagement that some of us in Spanish departments found so exasperating about Borges, particularly in the years following Argentina's repressive Dirty War. Now, in Continental philosophy departments, the reception of Borges was quite different. Borges was associated with other philosophical writers like Robbe-Grillet and Italo Calvino, who dealt with post-meta-physical, linguistic, constructivist notions of the world. Continental philosophers like Deleuze and Foucault wrote on Borges in new and suggestive ways that turned an otherwise politically "conservative" writer into a philosophical postmodern thinker. Consequently, it was this philosophical Borges that those of us who were also philosophers found so appealing and thought-provoking about his work in the early 80s. Yet it is important to acknowledge from the outset, that there has always been not just one but many "Borgeses" that complement and contradict each other in ways that break with the law of non-contradiction, as in "The Garden of Forking Paths." And this is the admirable virtue of Dapía's beautifully written Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Analytic Philosophy and Representation, wherein the Argentine writer is treated not so much as a philosopher, but rather philosophically. And this is particularly important in light of the fact that Dapía places Borges, not amid Continental philosophers (who have always had a close connection to literature), but rather amongst "post-analytic philosophers" like Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, Arthur Danto, and Nelson Goodman. As she declares in the "Introduction," her use of post-analytic philosophy does not imply "that Borges was interested in pursuing the problem of representation" as an analytic philosopher. The goal is "to read Borges philosophically." [End Page 307] And this is what she does by intercalating the ideas contained in Borges' short stories, essays, and poems with certain concepts of post-analytic philosophy that have to do with the nature of reality vis-à-vis the study of metaphysics and epistemology. Moreover, since the conversation here is not between science and philosophy, which would necessitate a mathematical and experimental approach, but rather between literature and philosophy, the major focus of Dapía's book is the question of "representation." As such, then, I will attempt to summarize for the reader, the way the author frames the various dialogues between Borges and each philosopher, and will argue that Dapía's book is a major and unique contribution to Borges studies, in that it points to certain notions in Borges without which it is nearly impossible to understand what prima facie seem to be literary reiterations of language games. That, to a great extent has do with Borges' (Kantian) notion of reality, and his use of irony, as well as his notion of writing as an "invention" of reality, and its impact on the question of "the Other" in anthropological terms. And here a quick return to the history of modern philosophy may help us to appreciate the encounter, as presented by Dapía, between Borges and Rorty. As is...