Copyright by Oswaldo Zavala 2006

Copyright by Oswaldo Zavala 2006 The Dissertation Committee for Oswaldo Zavala certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: LITERATURE TO INFINITY: A BORGESIAN GENEALOGY OF CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN NARRATIVE Committee: ___________________________________ César Salgado, Supervisor ___________________________________ Jean Bessière, Co-Supervisor ___________________________________ Enrique Fierro ___________________________________ Alain Suberchicot ___________________________________ Nicolas Shumway LITERATURE TO INFINITY: A BORGESIAN GENEALOGY OF CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN NARRATIVE by Oswaldo Zavala, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2006 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writing of these pages would not have been possible without the boundless help of Professor Jean Bessière, whose guidance enriched my understanding of literature and inspired the theoretical approach of this investigation. I am equally grateful to Professor César Salgado, who accommodated the academic peculiarities of this joint degree and whose commitment to the research and teaching of Latin American literature is exemplary. My heartfelt thanks are also offered to Professor Enrique H. Fierro for his extraordinary generosity, intellectual stimulation, illuminating company, friendship and mentorship. I appreciate, as well, the support of Rebecca Pollack, whose comments and editing substantially improved the final version of this text. I thank the support of my parents, María del Rosario Espinoza and Rosendo Zavala, whose passion for teaching and dedication to their students are my model in this career. I dedicate this work to Sarah Pollack, whose detailed revision and profound analysis brought this investigation closer to her intellectual height. iv LITERATURE TO INFINITY: A BORGESIAN GENEALOGY OF CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN NARRATIVE Publication No.___________________ Oswaldo Zavala, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2006 Supervisor: César Salgado Co-Supervisor: Jean Bessière These pages propose a literary genealogy that emerges in Latin America with the th Modernismo movement at the end of the 19P P century, a current in which literary language becomes an epistemological phenomenon that manifests along with the crisis of modernity, analyzed by French philosopher Michel Foucault. This possibility of literature challenges the stability of the modern subject, shatters our notion of teleological continuity and opens up a realm of a pure experience of language. To produce a genealogy, this investigation undertakes the study of four post-boom novels written about Mexico: Los detectives salvajes (1998) by Roberto Bolaño (Santiago de Chile 1953 — Blanes 2003), Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe (1998) by Daniel Sada (Mexicali 1953), La cresta de Ilión (2002) by Cristina Rivera Garza (Matamoros 1964) and A pesar del oscuro silencio (1992) by Jorge Volpi (Mexico 1968). Literary history, from this perspective, does not obey the chronological appearance of v works as literature and tradition become fragmentary and discontinuous, without an origin or stable identity. The present study will consider the notion of infinity through four textual strategies traced in the works of Borges and reencountered in the four novels mentioned above: 1) The radical exhaustion of language: A proliferation of words —their duplication, modification and destruction— denotes the unstable condition of a fiction that pursues its own limits. 2) The expanding void of the absence of the œuvre: Deriving the concept from Maurice Blanchot’s theories, this dissertation argues that the impossibility of writing about what Foucault calls the “unthought” is one of modernity’s ultimate crises. 3) The destabilizing presence of the other threatening the unity of the same: Heterogeneity splinters our notions of individuality and identity, reflecting identity’s changing nature. 4) Transgression and madness: A disruptive approach to language that challenges both the coherence of the subject and the logical flow of the literary text. The (re)definition of infinity that Borges inscribed in his literature will let its presence be felt in each line of this investigation, hoping to produce new avenues for the study of contemporary Latin American narrative. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV BOOK ONE: TOWARDS A GENEALOGY OF LITERARY INFINITY 1 INTRODUCTION: THE QUEST FOR MODERNITY 3 CHAPTER I: GENEALOGY, INFINITY AND LITERARY HISTORY 9 th I.1 Infinity in 20P P Century Hispanic American Narrative .......................................9 I.1.1 Case Study One: Words and the Boom...................................................9 I.1.2 Case Study Two: The Post-Boom and Mexico.....................................14 I.1.3 Literature, Foucault and Genealogy .....................................................17 I.1.4 Methodological Refinements................................................................25 I.2 The Genealogy of Genealogy: From Nietzsche to Foucault.............................31 I.2.1 Genealogy and Its Precursors ...............................................................31 I.2.2 Nietzsche and The Genealogy of Morals .............................................33 I.2.3 Foucault’s Archeology .........................................................................36 I.2.4 The Death of Man.................................................................................41 I.2.5 Archeology and Postmodernism...........................................................47 I.2.6 The Birth of Literature and the Death of the Author............................52 I.3 Constructing a Literary Genealogy of Infinity .................................................62 I.3.1 Time Lost, Time Overcome..................................................................62 I.3.2 The Genealogical Design......................................................................64 I.3.3 “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”..........................................................68 I.3.4 Literature to Infinity .............................................................................72 I.3.5 The Genealogy of Literary Infinity in Mexican Narrative ...................81 CHAPTER II: THE BORGES FACTOR: REVISITING THE CANON 87 II.1 Mr. Hyde .........................................................................................................87 II.1.1 Two Genealogies, Two Borges ...........................................................87 II.1.2 The Anti-humanist...............................................................................98 vii II.1.3 Borges and His Successors................................................................107 II.2 Borges and Infinity: The French Decoding...................................................113 II.2.1 Waiting for the Epistemic Change ....................................................113 II.2.2 Writing and the Supplement: Derridean Dissemination ...................117 II.2.3 The Reading Continuum of Genette and Caillois .............................125 II.2.4 Blanchot and the Discovery of Literary Infinity ...............................130 II.2.5 A Founder of Discursivity: The Foucauldian Rupture......................134 II.3 The Exit Door of the Library of Babel..........................................................141 II.3.1 The Reader and the Library: “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote”.....141 II.3.2 The Radical Exhaustion of Language: “La biblioteca de Babel”......147 II.3.3 The Absence of Œuvre: “El milagro secreto”...................................152 II.3.4 The Same, The Other: “El sur” .........................................................156 II.3.5 Transgression: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”....................................159 II.3.6 Literary Infinity: A Garden of Forked Paths.....................................164 BOOK TWO: CONTEMPORARY BRANCHES IN MEXICO 168 CHAPTER III: INFINITY REGAINED 169 III.1 Daniel Sada and Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe: The Radical Exhaustion of Language ................................................................169 III.1.1 Staring Directly at the Sun...............................................................169 III.1.2 From Mexico to Mágico ..................................................................176 III.1.3 The Sadean Discourse......................................................................180 III.1.4 The Narrating Multiplicity...............................................................185 III.1.5 Comala Abandoned..........................................................................191 III.1.6 The Solitude of Literary Language..................................................195 III.2 Roberto Bolaño and Los detectives salvajes: The Absence of the Œuvre...203 III.2.1 The Lesson in Seville.......................................................................203 III.2.2 The Artifice and the Precipice .........................................................208 III.2.3 The Author Function........................................................................217 III.2.4 Behind the Window .........................................................................225 viii III.2.5 Corollary ..........................................................................................232 CHAPTER IV: INFINITY CONTINUED 237 IV.1 Cristina Rivera Garza and La cresta de Ilión: The

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