'The One Does Not Exist': Borges and Modernity's Predicament

Abstract

Where some critics tend to see absence and abdication in Borges, others seek a way out of the impasses of modernity by clinging to pre-modern configurations, as if Borges's references to full-fledged 'real presences' could be taken at face value. Against these reductive paradigms, this essay locates an ethics of writing at play in Borges's response to modernity's predicament. To prove this point, I contest the claim according to which the ethical signification of Borges's writing is grounded in a monist and humanist notion of repetition that results in a traditional cultural agenda based upon ethnic, linguistic and national continuities. By focusing on the figure of the book (the national book as guarantor of an 'imagined community', and the book as the summa of knowledge or tradition), I show how Borges's fictions undermine their mythical power. By dismantling these fables of unity and totality, Borges' texts expose the reader to perplexity, an effective tonality that signals an openness to discontinuities and differences.