You Might Be Able to Get There From Here: Reconsidering Borges and the Postmodern (review)

Abstract

FRISCH, MARK. You Might Be Able to Get There From Here: Reconsidering and the Postmodern. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2004.Ever since the publication of John Earth's 1967 essay Literature of Exhaustion Jorge Luis has been viewed in the United States as a key figure in international postmodernism. His narrative experiments and his ideas about literature have been widely lauded, imitated and echoed by major writers in the canon. In the book here under review, Mark Frisch describes as of [the] early founders or precursors (16) of postmodernism, and sets out to define the precise relationship between the great Argentine author and the postmodern. His focus is on Borges's philosophy or his larger (56), as he calls it. His basic argument is that Borges's work marks a sharp break with modernism. While the account Frisch provides of Borges's thinking on subjects such as epistemology, history, the self, and politics is on the whole appealing and plausible, will see that the historical argument about the transition from modernism to postmodernism is marred by a very superficial definition of the first of these two concepts, and by the author's confusion about his own intellectual pedigree.Frisch's definition of postmodernity is part Jean-Francois Lyotard, part Richard Rorty. The key to the vision is that have lost our faith in the metanarratives on which our society has depended, and which defined our utopian visions (Christianity, Marxism, Capitalism, Reason, Science, Positivism) (69). One reaction to this claim might be to wonder who this we is, to whom the author refers. The present occupant of the White House proves that there are still plenty of people in our society who believe in Christianity and Capitalism (though not always in Science or Reason). Still, the Lyotardian definition is helpful in accounting for certain significant (though by no means universal) phenomena of our time, which Frisch describes as indeterminacy, a decentering, a mixing of the highbrow and lowbrow, a reaching out to the margins, and a challenge to the privileged status of knowledge and of authority in general (69). At the same time, Frisch rejects the radical relativism some have extracted from the contemporary epistemological crisis. In order to skirt the threat of nihilism, the author adds an element of philosophical pragmatism to the mix. According to Frisch, postmodern culture does not destroy or totally reject 'truth value,' but simply redefines it as systems that construct to meet our needs (70). This, he maintains, is precisely the balance expresses in his work. The Argentine author played a key role in exploring notions of randomness and indeterminacy, in blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, and in re-examining our concepts of literature and history. But Frisch makes a convincing case that did not tend toward the absolute relativism and celebration of chaos of some thinkers associated with postmodernism, but rather that his orientation came closest to those writers and critics who affirm that positive knowledge is possible (49). To explain Borges's concept of knowledge, Frisch makes suggestive use of the metaphor of the labyrinth: Borges seems to suggest that one can create a sense of order within an impenetrable, chaotic labyrinth, and that with the help of certain man-made signposts, travel from one part of the labyrinth may certainly be possible. However, deciphering the overall, ultimate structure and order of that labyrinth proves impossible (49). The rather odd title of Frisch's book refers to this redefined notion of truth and knowledge.The who emerges from this book is skeptical, pluralist and open-minded. In the course of his book, Frisch explores how Borges's core epistemological stance plays out in various areas, such as his notion of the self, his attitude toward gender, and his views on politics. …