The veiled construction of the Argentine subject in Borges
Description
This dissertation explores the veiled construction of the Argentine subject in the works of Jorge Luis Borges (1899--1986). It focuses on four categories or aspects of that identity, i.e., gender, vitality, ethnicity, and ethics. The limits between these categories are fluid in relation to each other, in relation to the classical paradigm of Argentine identity: barbarism versus civilization, and in relation to the category of the 'Real,' in a Lacanian sense. Thus, at times, the analysis fluctuates between all of these categories. The construction of the Argentine subject's identity is said to be veiled because it is exclusively the product of desire turned toward a mythical and inaccessible past whose claims to any ontological foundations are quickly dissolved by the evidence of a world which is purely textual. Nevertheless, like all that is repressed and/or oppressed, it comes back as the 'uncanny,' in the imaginary space of Borgesian writing. Borges vindicates an Argentine identity which is masculine, bellicose, pro-Germanic and 'anti-national'---from the point of view of Argentine populist nationalism---and amoral or aristocratic, in a Nietzschean sense. The signification of this gesture is read in the context of the Argentine history in which Borges's writing takes place The first chapter focuses on the construction of gender from a feminist point of view, analyzing triangular structures of homoerotic and homo-social desire. The second chapter explores the concept of vitality or vigor; the discursive tradition it originates in, and the transformations undergone by it once inserted in the Argentine cultural field through Borges's writing. The third chapter explores ethnicity, in particular the concept of ' criollez.' The emptying of this traditional symbol of Argentine identity and its infusion with new meanings is examined. The fourth chapter undertakes an examination of the ethics/esthetics of the Argentine identity, i.e., the relationship that Borges's writing establishes with Argentine and Latin American reality, defined as the socio-political, economic, and cultural reality of these societies as a whole