Funes the Arboreous: Borderless Ecologies in Borges’s Ficciones
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Dominic Harkin
Abstract
Jorge Luis Borges’s titular mnemonist of ‘Funes the Memorious’ once proposed ‘an analogous language’ to that of John Locke, which would pair ‘each individual thing, each stone, each bird and each branch, [with] its own name.’ The project Funes abandoned, we’re informed, because even this ‘seemed too general to him, too ambiguous.’ Much work on Borges concerns the vastness of his labyrinthine fictions; however, the infinities of the second half of Ficciones are primarily fractal, burrowing down, not out. Funes’s frustration is with his failure to wholly disentangle objects or beings from their networks of association, or, as Eco-critic Stacy Alaimo writes, at the minute level, ‘substantial interchanges render [even] the human permeable, dissolving stable outlines.’ This paper seeks to place Borges in dialogue with new, eco-critical theories of trans-corporeality; examining how his stories reconfigure the supposedly discrete object, and trouble the ostensible borderlines between the subject and their environment.
Abstract
Jorge Luis Borges’s titular mnemonist of ‘Funes the Memorious’ once proposed ‘an analogous language’ to that of John Locke, which would pair ‘each individual thing, each stone, each bird and each branch, [with] its own name.’ The project Funes abandoned, we’re informed, because even this ‘seemed too general to him, too ambiguous.’ Much work on Borges concerns the vastness of his labyrinthine fictions; however, the infinities of the second half of Ficciones are primarily fractal, burrowing down, not out. Funes’s frustration is with his failure to wholly disentangle objects or beings from their networks of association, or, as Eco-critic Stacy Alaimo writes, at the minute level, ‘substantial interchanges render [even] the human permeable, dissolving stable outlines.’ This paper seeks to place Borges in dialogue with new, eco-critical theories of trans-corporeality; examining how his stories reconfigure the supposedly discrete object, and trouble the ostensible borderlines between the subject and their environment.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
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Part I
- Borders as Translation Spaces 1
- Border Narratives: Crossing Lines and Telling Tales 9
- Geophilosophy of the Border: Beyond Immunitarian Politics 21
- Borders and Neo-Nationalism: A Geophilosophical Approach 37
- We Fight for this Land 51
- Converting the Limit: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Infinite in the Act of Difference 63
- Liminal Places and Non-Places 77
- Border Brushstrokes: The Ulster Arts Club and the Post-Partition Nation 91
- Bordering as the Breaking Force of Border Subjects 101
- Frontiers of Sexual Difference: The Phantasm of Gender 115
- Borders and Language: Hermeneutic-Philosophical Issues 129
- ‘Thou wenest Ich be a beggere’: Borders and the Habitus in Middle English Romance 145
- Funes the Arboreous: Borderless Ecologies in Borges’s Ficciones 157
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Part II
- Borders and Barbed Wire: Cahir Healy’s Memoirs from the Argenta Prison Ship 171
- A Residue of Boundary Correspondence 183
- Two Years on an Ulster Prison Ship 189
- Contributors and Editors 307
- Index 311
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
-
Part I
- Borders as Translation Spaces 1
- Border Narratives: Crossing Lines and Telling Tales 9
- Geophilosophy of the Border: Beyond Immunitarian Politics 21
- Borders and Neo-Nationalism: A Geophilosophical Approach 37
- We Fight for this Land 51
- Converting the Limit: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Infinite in the Act of Difference 63
- Liminal Places and Non-Places 77
- Border Brushstrokes: The Ulster Arts Club and the Post-Partition Nation 91
- Bordering as the Breaking Force of Border Subjects 101
- Frontiers of Sexual Difference: The Phantasm of Gender 115
- Borders and Language: Hermeneutic-Philosophical Issues 129
- ‘Thou wenest Ich be a beggere’: Borders and the Habitus in Middle English Romance 145
- Funes the Arboreous: Borderless Ecologies in Borges’s Ficciones 157
-
Part II
- Borders and Barbed Wire: Cahir Healy’s Memoirs from the Argenta Prison Ship 171
- A Residue of Boundary Correspondence 183
- Two Years on an Ulster Prison Ship 189
- Contributors and Editors 307
- Index 311
