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Borges and the construction of “reality”

  • Fernando De Toro (b. 1950) is a full professor at the University of Manitoba 〈fernando.detoro@ad.umanitoba.ca〉. His research interests include postmodernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, and post-feminism. His publications include Intersecciones: Ensayos sobre teatro. Antropología, Semiótica, Teatro Latinoamericano, Post-Modernismo, Post-Colonialismo, y Feminismo (1999); New intersections: Essays on culture and literature in the post-modern and post-colonial condition (2002); Semiótica del Teatro: Del Texto a la Puesta en escena (4th edn., 2008); and Interseccitions III: Globalización y cultura: Ensayos sobre arquitectura, cultura, pintura, música y literature (2011).

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Published/Copyright: June 7, 2013
Semiotica
From the journal Semiotica Volume 2013 Issue 195

Abstract

In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” Borges challenges the veracity of any discourses that presents itself as Truth, particularly pertaining to master narratives such as philosophy and History, and engages in a deconstruction of these narratives. In order to this, Borges introduces a number of strategies: a) the cancellation of the difference between fiction and reality, b) the creation of a world based on a marginal comment in his own narration, and c) the circulation and dissemination of discourse that pretends to have an ontological reality. In what follows we will examine these three strategies which Borges uses to construct the truth of Tlön.

Keywords: poststructuralism; metafiction; simulation; rhizomaticity; post-modernity; deconstruction
University of Manitoba

About the author

Fernando De Toro

Fernando De Toro (b. 1950) is a full professor at the University of Manitoba 〈〉. His research interests include postmodernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, and post-feminism. His publications include Intersecciones: Ensayos sobre teatro. Antropología, Semiótica, Teatro Latinoamericano, Post-Modernismo, Post-Colonialismo, y Feminismo (1999); New intersections: Essays on culture and literature in the post-modern and post-colonial condition (2002); Semiótica del Teatro: Del Texto a la Puesta en escena (4th edn., 2008); and Interseccitions III: Globalización y cultura: Ensayos sobre arquitectura, cultura, pintura, música y literature (2011).

Published Online: 2013-06-07
Published in Print: 2013-06-06

©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Masthead
  2. Qu'est-ce qu'une fiction cubiste ? La “construction textuelle du point de vue” dans L'Herbe et La Route des Flandres
  3. Lostology: Transmedia storytelling and expansion/compression strategies
  4. Semiotics at the crossroads of art
  5. Semioethics and translation as communication in and across genres
  6. Shakespeare's first sonnet: Reading through repetitions
  7. Visual grammar in practice: Negotiating the arrangement of speech bubbles in storyboards
  8. Semiotics and Knowledge Management (KM): A theoretical and empirical approach
  9. The analysis of Licheń's Holy Icon as a case study in semiotic fortition
  10. Types of dialogue: Echo, deaf, and dialectical
  11. Borges and the construction of “reality”
  12. Advanced literacy and the place of literary semantics in secondary education: A tool of fictional analysis
  13. Peirce, Leibniz, and the threshold of pragmatism
  14. The devil in the sheaves: Ergotism in Southern Italy
  15. Biosemiotic scenarios
  16. Reflecting on human language through computer languages
https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2013-0032
Keywords for this article
poststructuralism; metafiction; simulation; rhizomaticity; post-modernity; deconstruction

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Masthead
  2. Qu'est-ce qu'une fiction cubiste ? La “construction textuelle du point de vue” dans L'Herbe et La Route des Flandres
  3. Lostology: Transmedia storytelling and expansion/compression strategies
  4. Semiotics at the crossroads of art
  5. Semioethics and translation as communication in and across genres
  6. Shakespeare's first sonnet: Reading through repetitions
  7. Visual grammar in practice: Negotiating the arrangement of speech bubbles in storyboards
  8. Semiotics and Knowledge Management (KM): A theoretical and empirical approach
  9. The analysis of Licheń's Holy Icon as a case study in semiotic fortition
  10. Types of dialogue: Echo, deaf, and dialectical
  11. Borges and the construction of “reality”
  12. Advanced literacy and the place of literary semantics in secondary education: A tool of fictional analysis
  13. Peirce, Leibniz, and the threshold of pragmatism
  14. The devil in the sheaves: Ergotism in Southern Italy
  15. Biosemiotic scenarios
  16. Reflecting on human language through computer languages
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