DOCSLIB.ORG

Spots of Time Something Very Strange Opens the Novel the Nashville

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Spots of Time Something Very Strange Opens the Novel the Nashville “When I blinked it was over. I was thinking my life would get slower. That I’d sort this stuff out when I’m older.” ~Typhoon (“Young Fathers”) “Lost in a dream, or just the silence of a moment? It’s so hard to tell.” ~The War on Drugs (“Lost in the Dream”) Spots of Time “Our language is so saturated and animated by time that it is quite possible there is not one statement in these pages which in some way does not demand or invoke the idea of time.” (Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths; “A New Refutation of Time,” p. 218) Something very strange opens the novel The Nashville American, and a reader’s first impression is to see this as a spooky and ominous sign that the foregoing book will be an erudite and esoteric enigma, or perhaps the fever-dream of a nearly-crazy philosopher. This strange thing is the epigram which quotes from the fragmentary denouement of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges called “Averroes’ Search.” In it, Averroes, the 12th Century Andalusian philosopher, has just written in his manuscript the findings of a search which should have been impossible to complete. Strangely (very strangely), it wasn’t Averroes who wrote this answer in his notebook, but Borges, believing himself to be Averroes while narrating the story about the experience of aporia in Averroes’ search. The moment in the short story illuminates the opening of the novel because both stories take place within spots of time. There is no straight-forward way to explain this idea, so please expect me to stagger my way through it. As I do, I will try to gain a clear vantage on a non-linear view of time—one which cannot possibly be real. Strangely (again, very strangely), this outlook is held as a fundamental pillar in the ontology of most of the nation/culture of Megana. It sees the flow of time not as a forward march of progress but as an intentional cycle honed upon meaning, purpose and identity. And if I may, I will discuss this topic here. “Will”—see? Borges was right. So much of life is just chance, but every now and then you know you’re in the right place. I had this happen once in a philosophy class where we got on the subject of time. I was a spectator in a short disagreement between two other students, a guy and a girl, who were seated directly behind me. I will name them Nick and Jess, just for clarity. With the attention of the class on them, there was something in the assigned David Hume reading which had Nick and Jess debating the influences of time…And yeah, you’re thinking this is the kind of nonsense that happens in Philosophy classes, which is why you left the subject to the pot-smokers while you occupied a seat in a Business Accounting class. Whether or not this was for the best in your case, reader, here is what you missed: Jess: …Yes, but how do you know your choices are in your best interest? Nick: Because I’m choosing to do them. Jess: You chose, but that was earlier. How do you know you still agree? How do you know you’re even the same person? Nick: I am. Jess: Yeah, but how do you know? Nick: I just do. Jess: Yeah, but how do you…like…know? This is the part where the whole class burst out laughing. Not because of Jess’s insistence on her question, but because of how the guy next to Nick reacted. Tom—I’m calling him “Tom”— had one of those full-on mind-blown reactions which always seems comical and which instantly reminded me of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Tom had been listening intently to the discussion, not seeming to have taken a side in the matter. But when Jess emphasized her idea, he was sent down the rabbit hole. He turned his attention away from Nick and Jess, and like a seasoned actor who knows he’s captured the moment of the scene and can simply react, looked forward vacantly and said “Whoa…” Tom’s reaction aside, it’s hard to make a case that we’ve somehow gotten it wrong with our intuitive understanding of time and continuity. There was a past, there will be a future, and this is the present; I am myself in each of these instances, and this idea couldn’t be more straight- forward and self-evident. Meanwhile, any outside claims which go against this way of thinking seem to be some eristic form of sophistry—like trying to trip someone up with Zeno’s Paradox while losing to them in a footrace. “Yes, you’re closer to the finish line, but you’ll never actually cross it! You’ll only get half way, then half way again until infinity! …” Yet, races are won. Likewise, idealism can only go so far before it must yield to reality. So in order to consider alternative perspectives on time, we need to justify its usefulness…or, at least, its rationality. Mathematics professor Sir Roger Penrose had a good solution for this sort of problem: He said, in theory, we can’t always know which postulates are true and which are false. But the truth tends to perform better than nonsense in real-world situations. So to find out what’s right and what’s wrong, we should put everything in play and find out what works and what doesn’t. And what works so well with our linear view of time is that it reflects the way we engage with our environment. As living beings, we are each a succession of physiological processes; we are, each of us, a multitude of chain reactions. Each process keys upon the momentum inherited from the collective moment which directly proceeded it. Applying Neko Case’s perspective in “Nothing to Remember” is entirely straight-forward: “I’m just action—and at other times reaction.” (Imagine the fictional character who has this thought as an anagnorisis…). Our existential paradigm is to consume mass and convert it into energy; through the emergent complexity of our extraordinarily intricate biological system, an internal awareness comes to perceive and analyze this process by seeing the self within the present moment. As memory unfolds, making an impression of each previous instance, time seems to roll forward like a wheel, tangentially touching the ground which represents the continuous, static and transitive span between the past and future. This thin band of time which we know as the present moment is no more than about thirty seconds, although I personally assume it to be only two or three seconds. When the present moment records itself through replication and memory, a dialectic emerges between the physiological process (the living being) and this emergent entity (the self). This was Jess’s point with Nick. She was saying the present-moment-Nick was under orders from the previous-moment-Nick (a series of them, actually). But since there is momentum and memory driving Nick’s understanding of the process—both of which are feedback loops—he is fooled into believing in a chimera of persistence. But, Jess would say: Only one version of you exists: the present one. Luckily for Nick, and for the rest of us as well, this statement is incomplete. Because of our memories, when we wake up with a hangover (or reckon ourselves to a similar self- destructive or disappointing consequence), we can ask ourselves: why did I do this to myself? Without memory, the present person would always be forsaken by all those yesterdays who had no sense of some future self. Without memory, we would always wake up to an empty stomach—or at least to an empty fridge. But because of memory, we can take a moment to reflect and find a fair balance between now and later. Because surely it’s the role of the present to employ the resources of the past and set the course of the future. All of this adds up to a postulate which is likely true: Our belief in the flow of time is reasonable. Yet it leaves the intriguing question: what if there’s another way to see it? Also: are there any flaws or gaps in our perception, opening the door to a slightly different or radically different concept? One outcome of our firmly-grounded understanding of time which instantly comes to mind is the oddity of time-travel—just by the fact that it even seems plausible. I am a big fan of time travel movies in general; I am inspired by the premise of Time Cop starring Jean Claude Van Damme and by the Stephen King novel and miniseries 11.22.63 about an attempt to go back in time to prevent the JFK assassination. But Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the Back to the Future trilogy are definitely my all-time time-travel favorites. Bill and Ted’s is a must-see movie for anyone and everyone. Not only is it funny and surprising, but the two main characters essentially have the same mission as I do in these essays, which is to gather a group of historical figures to express a cohesive perspective of the world. And while I make my time-travelling circuit with the help of my books, the public library and the internet; Bill and Ted do it with the help of Rufus, their guide from the future, and his late 1980s phone booth-time machine.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Some things remain / Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/58z208b0 Author Guerra Cota, Aldo Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Some Things Remain A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts by Aldo Guerra Cota Committee in charge: Professor Louis Hock, Chair Professor Luis Alvarez Professor Anya Gallacio Professor Michael Trigilio 2014 The Thesis of Aldo Guerra Cota is approved and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2014 iii The space within us reaches out, translates each thing. For the essence of a tree to be real for you, cast inner space around it, out of the space that exists in you. Encircle it with restraint. It has no borders. Only in the realm of your renouncing can it, as a tree, be known. R.M. Rilke, Uncollected Poems,1924 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page………..……………………………………………………..……iii Epigraph……………………………………………………………………………iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………….v List of Figures…...…………….……………………………….………………....vi Abstract of the Thesis………………....………………………………………..vii Project Description….…………………..…………………………………….…..1 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………22 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Gallery View A ..…………..……………………………………...…..…2 Figure 2: Still image
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Jorge Luis Borges the GOSPEL ACCORDING to MARK
    1 Jorge Luis Borges THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK (1970) Translated by Norrnan Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), an outstanding modern writer of Latin America, was born in Buenos Aires into a family prominent in Argentine history. Borges grew up bilingual, learning English from his English grandmother and receiving his early education from an English tutor. Caught in Europe by the outbreak of World War II, Borges lived in Switzerland and later Spain, where he joined the Ultraists, a group of experimental poets who renounced realism. On returning to Argentina, he edited a poetry magazine printed in the form of a poster and affixed to city walls. For his opposition to the regime of Colonel Juan Peron, Borges was forced to resign his post as a librarian and was mockingly offered a job as a chicken inspector. In 1955, after Peron was deposed, Borges became director of the national library and Professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Since childhood a sufferer from poor eyesight, Borges eventually went blind. His eye problems may have encouraged him to work mainly in short, highly crafed forms: stories, essays, fables, and lyric poems full of elaborate music. His short stories, in Ficciones (1944), El hacedor (1960); translated as Dreamtigers, (1964), and Labyrinths (1962), have been admired worldwide. These events took place at La Colorada ranch, in the southern part of the township of Junin, during the last days of March 1928. The protagonist was a medical student named Baltasar Espinosa. We may describe him, for now, as one of the common run of young men from Buenos Aires, with nothing more noteworthy about him than an almost unlimited kindness and a capacity for public speaking that had earned him several prizes at the English school0 in Ramos Mejia.
    [Show full text]
  • Postmodern Or Post-Auschwitz Borges and the Limits of Representation
    Edna Aizenberg Postmodern or Post-Auschwitz Borges and the Limits of Representation he list of “firsts” is well known by now: Borges, father of the New Novel, the nouveau roman, the Boom; Borges, forerunner T of the hypertext, early magical realist, proto-deconstructionist, postmodernist pioneer. The list is well known, but it may omit the most significant encomium: Borges, founder of literature after Auschwitz, a literature that challenges our orders of knowledge through the frac- tured mirror of one of the century’s defining events. Fashions and prejudices ingrained in several critical communities have obscured Borges’s role as a passionate precursor of many later intellec- tuals -from Weisel to Blanchot, from Amery to Lyotard. This omission has hindered Borges research, preventing it from contributing to major theoretical currents and areas of inquiry. My aim is to confront this lack. I want to rub Borges and the Holocaust together in order to unset- tle critical verities, meditate on the limits of representation, foster dia- logue between disciplines -and perhaps make a few sparks fly. A shaper of the contemporary imagination, Borges serves as a touch- stone for concepts of literary reality and unreality, for problems of knowledge and representation, for critical and philosophical debates on totalizing systems and postmodern esthetics, for discussions on cen- ters and peripheries, colonialism and postcolonialism. Investigating the Holocaust in Borges can advance our broadest thinking on these ques- tions, and at the same time strengthen specific disciplines, most par- ticularly Borges scholarship, Holocaust studies, and Latin American literary criticism. It is to these disciplines that I now turn.
    [Show full text]
  • The Visualizing Capacity of Magical Realism: Objects and Expression in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges
    The Visualizing Capacity of Magical Realism: Objects and Expression in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges Lois Parkinson Zamora University of Houston In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. —Jorge Luis Borges, “Fauna of Mirrors,” Borges and Guerrero 67 The term “magical realism” was first uttered in a discussion of the visual arts. The German art critic Franz Roh, in his 1925 essay, de- scribed a group of painters whom we now categorize generally as Post- Expressionists, and he used the term Magischer Realismus to emphasize (and celebrate) their return to figural representation after a decade or more of abstract art. In the introduction to the expanded Spanish-lan- guage version of this essay published two years later, in 1927, by José Ortega y Gasset by his Revista de Occidente, Roh again emphasized these painters’ engagement of the “everyday,” the “commonplace”: “with the word ‘magic’ as opposed to ‘mystic,’ I wish to indicate that the mystery does not descend to the represented world, but rather hides and palpi- tates behind it” (“Magical” 16). An alternative label circulating at the time for this style of German painting was Neue Sachlichkeit, New Ob- jectivity, a term that has outlived Magischer Realismus, in part because Roh eventually disavowed his own designation. In his 1958 survey of twentieth-century German art, he explicitly retired the term “magical re- 22 Lois Parkinson Zamora alism,” tying its demise to the status of the object itself: “In our day and age, questions about the character of the object … have become irrel- evant … I believe that we can demonstrate that in abstract art the greatest [achievements] are again possible” (German 10).
    [Show full text]
  • Jorge Luis Borges' Métier Joseph Tyler University of Michigan-Flint Hipertexto N All Modesty, As Researchers, Writers, Litera
    Hipertexto 20 Verano 2014 pp. 132-139 Jorge Luis Borges’ Métier Joseph Tyler University of Michigan-Flint Hipertexto … vi a Borges en una nueva fase de su éxito creciente: era ya director de la Biblioteca Nacional, profesor de la Universidad, miembro de la Academia… Pero lo que más me sorprendió fue verlo transformado en conferencista. Enrique Anderson-Imbert. “El Éxito de Borges” 7 n all modesty, as researchers, writers, literary critics, we, whether we like it or not, I belong to a select group. I don’t want to say brotherhood, because that would have serious implications. As members, we gather, at times, to share our thoughts, personal interests, and concerns, and it is for this reason I am here today to address the professorial inclinations of a well-known writer whose calling card exhibits similar descriptions as ours, but raised to a much higher degree of quality and interpretation, as the quote, by Anderson-Imbert, above implies. Furthermore, in the introduction to Seven Nights, Alastair Reid (in 1984) reminds us that: “Among his many literary selves, Borges has had a separate existence as a lecturer for almost the past forty years, and, like every separate dimension of Borges, the lectures shed a different kind of light on the whole, and make clear more of Borges’s webbed connections.”1 The last time I saw Borges in Pennsylvania, in spite of his frailty, he was still going strong delivering lectures, and instructing us, on diverse literary themes. My early contacts with Jorge Luis Borges were those in which I, as novice graduate student, sat in awe of this man when he delivered his profound lectures at the University of California, San Diego and, later at Michigan State University.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19339-9 - The Cambridge Companion to Jorge Luis Borges Edited by Edwin Williamson Excerpt More information EDWIN WILLIAMSON Introduction Jorge Luis Borges was one of the great writers of the twentieth century and the most infl uential author in the Spanish language of modern times. He had a seminal infl uence on Latin American literature and a lasting impact on literary fi ction in many other languages. Although a poet and essayist, he was best known for his fi cciones – short stories or prose texts whose brevity condensed mental play into reverberating images and situations. Rejecting the constraints of psychological or social realism, Borges encour- aged writers to accept fi ction as a self-conscious artifact, susceptible to fan- tasy and to overtly intellectual, and even philosophical, concerns. Borges challenged the supremacy of the novel in the hierarchy of modern literature: he favored modes of storytelling which had long preceded the novel – fable, epic, parable, and folktale – as well as subgenres such as thrillers, science fi ction, and detective stories. He also blurred generic categories by bringing book reviews, scholarly essays, and footnotes within the bounds of fi ction. Even metaphysics and theology, he famously observed, could be regarded as branches of the literature of fantasy. Borges’s interest in metaphysics and literary ideas fostered the impres- sion that his work belonged in a kind of literary utopia, divorced from per- sonal experience or historical reality. This impression was underscored by the blindness which affl icted him a few years before he became famous, and which lent him the aura of an otherworldly, sightless bard.
    [Show full text]
  • The Comedy of Language in Borges' “La Busca De Averroes”
    The Comedy of Language in Borges’ “La busca de Averroes” E. Joseph Sharkey University of Washington “ a busca de Averroes” (“Averroes’ Search”), Borges tells us in an epilogue, L is a story of failure: “En la historia anterior quise narrar el proceso de una derrota…. Recordé a Averroes, que encerrado en el ámbito del Islam, nunca pudo saber el significado de las vocestragedia y comedia” (310) [“In the foregoing story, I tried to narrate the process of a defeat…. I remembered Averroes who, closed within the orb of Islam, could never know the meaning of the terms tragedy and comedy” (155)]. Borges delights in the irony that Averroes, the 12th-century Spanish Muslim philosopher so famous for his commentaries on Aristotle, could fail to comprehend these rather unmysterious terms so fundamental to the Poetics. Most of Borges’ critics, better poets than historians, take this particular plot as just another instance of the universal one they see in all stories, the tragedy of language. But the critical consensus about the limitations of language in Borges’ stories is too negative, and too simplistic, even with regard to those cases in which Borges himself affirms or seems to affirm it. Like an alarmist chorus, the critics cry that the gods of language go down whenever their oracles fail to travel like Hermes, winging perfectly across time, place, and mind: Averroes fails to translate tragedy and comedy, and we refuse ever again to go reverent to the altars of the word gods.1 Of course, the word “gods” can seem rather clumsy, or perhaps it is just that we don’t know how to worship them.
    [Show full text]
  • Laboratorio Dell'immaginario IL SEGRETO
    laboratorio dell’immaginario issn 1826-6118 rivista elettronica http://cav.unibg.it/elephant_castle IL SEGRETO a cura di Raul Calzoni, Michela Gardini, Viola Parente-Čapková settembre 2019 CAV - Centro Arti Visive Università degli Studi di Bergamo ADAM CHAMBERS A Secret Demand: On Endless Forms of Fiction in Borges’ El Milagro Secreto …the edges of a secret are more secret than the secret itself. – Maurice Blanchot (2003: 188). It is possible that in every work, language is superimposed upon itself in a secret verticality… – Michel Foucault (1977: 57). Although Jorge Luis Borges’ writings are often revered as master- works of twentieth-century fiction, his stories, or ficciones, still sit uncomfortably within the literary cannon. While they are often grouped within specific literary movements, such as modernist and postmodernist fiction, they also remain largely elusive to their read- ers, and resist any clear understanding.1 In particular, one can argue that through their many contradictions, perplexing details, and con- densed narratives, the Argentine author’s works are in fact, unclassi- fiable; not bound to a single national literature, they also fail to unite their readers around a set of recognizable literary forms.2 1 The debate regarding where to place Borges’ works in literary history is ongo- ing. He has been described as both a late modernist, and an early postmodernist. For example, see Javier Cercas’ recent study, The Blind Spot: An Essay on the Novel, for a discussion of how in literature, “postmodernity begins with Borges” (2018: 31). Alternately, for a strong endorsement of Borges as a modernist writer, see Sylvia Molloy’s “Mimesis and Modernism: The Case of Jorge Luis Borges,” in the edited collection, Literary Philosophers: Borges, Calvino, Eco (2002: 109).
    [Show full text]
  • Coelho's the Zahir and the Metamorphosis in Gender Relations
    The Postmodern Penelope: Coelho’s The Zahir and the Metamorphosis in Gender Relations Wisam Mansour* Coelho’s narrator tells us “if a book isn’t self-explanatory, then the book is not worth reading” (248). Though such a statement may not appeal to a Formalist critic in the sense that literature should alienate, defamiliarize and make difficult the literary experience, Coelho proves in The Zahir the assumption of his narrator. The book is so simple and its narrative flows so smoothly like a running stream of water in the early months of spring. Coelho’s narrative magically transfixes its readers and absorbs them into the mystical and mythical world of its narrator. A brief summary of the novel will do it great injustice as the novel’s forte lies in the smoothness, richness, spirituality and simplicity of its narrativity. In The Zahir1, Coelho tells us the story of its male narrator who, like Coelho himself, is a celebrated artist, lyric writer and novelist. The narrator-artist, whose name significantly remains incognito, finds himself obsessed with the mysterious and sudden disappearance of Esther, his third wife. Esther, a journalist and a war correspondent, in spite of her love and support to the narrator artist disappears and leaves the artist confounded and confused. For him she becomes the “Zahir”2 that haunts his days and nights. Though he forges various love affairs during the enigmatic absence of Esther, he cannot 1 Coelho, Paulo. The Zahir. Trans. Margaret Jull Costa. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005 2 The title comes from a tale by Jorge Luis Borges, published in his book The Aleph.
    [Show full text]
  • 000000827.Sbu.Pdf (597.6Kb)
    SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Reading, Borges In Search of Lost Eternity A Thesis Presented by Isaac Fer To The Graduate School In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts In Philosophy Stony Brook University December 2009 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Isaac Fer We, the thesis committee for the above candidate for the Master of Arts, hereby recommend acceptance of this thesis. Hugh J. Silverman—Thesis Advisor Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies Department of Philosophy Robert Crease—Second Reader Professor of Philosophy and Chairman Department of Philosophy This thesis is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Thesis Reading, Borges: In Search of Lost Eternity By Isaac Fer Master of Arts in Philosophy Stony Brook University 2009 Jorge Luis Borges repeatedly suggests that the history of metaphysics is a “history of perplexities.” In the introduction, I briefly explicate this notion by suggesting that there are mysteries that characterize the human condition. In each successive section, I examine the influence these “perplexities” have on Borges’ work. The primary enigma that motivates Borges’ writing, I suggest, is the one between temporality and eternity—that humankind is imprisoned by temporality and yet dreams of the ecstatic heights of the eternal absolute. We then locate in the first section this paradoxical possibility within the use of metaphor and allegory to make present for the reader certain eternal forms.
    [Show full text]
  • Time and the Observer in Jorge Luis Borges
    Time and the Observer in Jorge Luis Borges Venkat Ramanan Introduction The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges indicates in his essay ‘Time and J. W. Dunne’ that he does not “pretend to know what sort of thing time is— or even if it is a ‘thing’.”1 But we can see from Borges’ writings that he has undoubtedly thought deeply about the subject, including questioning the notion that time flows from past to future via the present. For instance, Borges alludes to his misgivings about the arrow of time in the short story ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ where the protagonist, Dr Yu Tsun, confronts the possibility of his death. While he first finds it “incredible” that he is going die that day, Dr Tsun acknowledges also the pointlessness of mourning for our lost lives because all things happen only in the present: “Then I reflected that everything happens to a man … precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen.”2 I believe, however, that Borges’ eclectic research and erudition in relation to the idea of time reaches its apotheosis in his essay ‘A New Refutation of Time’ where he offers his most explicit statements on the subject, especially in rejecting the reality of time’s flow, by accepting arguments from science, metaphysics, and elsewhere. Even so, we find that Borges appears to express a certain ambivalence as well about such a standpoint. In this article—after first discussing what led to Borges’ seeming denial of the arrow of time—I intend to explain why I feel Borges is unable to get reconciled to such a view of time without any reservations.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyright and Use of This Thesis This Thesis Must Be Used in Accordance with the Provisions of the Copyright Act 1968
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.ukbrought to you by CORE provided by Sydney eScholarship COPYRIGHT AND USE OF THIS THESIS This thesis must be used in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Reproduction of material protected by copyright may be an infringement of copyright and copyright owners may be entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. Section 51 (2) of the Copyright Act permits an authorized officer of a university library or archives to provide a copy (by communication or otherwise) of an unpublished thesis kept in the library or archives, to a person who satisfies the authorized officer that he or she requires the reproduction for the purposes of research or study. The Copyright Act grants the creator of a work a number of moral rights, specifically the right of attribution, the right against false attribution and the right of integrity. You may infringe the author’s moral rights if you: - fail to acknowledge the author of this thesis if you quote sections from the work - attribute this thesis to another author - subject this thesis to derogatory treatment which may prejudice the author’s reputation For further information contact the University’s Director of Copyright Services sydney.edu.au/copyright Borges and Mathematics Los juegos con el tiempo y con lo infinito S. Prashant Kumar S I O D T E ·M A RE E ·MUT N M S· E EAD A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Research) Faculty of Arts University of Sydney 22 May, 2015 Abstract My thesis concerns Jorge Luis Borges’ recurrent fascinations with mathematics.
    [Show full text]