BORGES AND NEW MEDIA: CONNECTIONS VIA HETEROTOPIC SPACES by SHERRIN FRANCES Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON December 2010 Copyright © by Sherrin Frances 2010 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank my committee members—Dr. Carolyn Guertin, Dr. Wendy Faris and Dr. Chris Conway—not only for their input and support, but also for taking a chance on an unknown, long lost student. I would especially like to thank my supervising professor, Dr. Carolyn Guertin, for her encouragement and perspective. Her careful reading and insightful suggestions pushed this project beyond my own expectations. I would also like to thank Dr. Tim Morris for facilitating such an easy return to UTA. Thank you, too, to Dr. Victor Vitanza for providing ongoing support throughout the last two decades. Thank you to my parents for instilling so many core values as I grew up. And, most especially, thank you to Robert Wall and Nicole Roberts for everything that you have done, are doing and will one day get around to: you are sources of tremendous energy and inspiration. September 14, 2010 iii ABSTRACT BORGES AND NEW MEIDA: CONNECTIONS VIA HETEROTOPIC SPACES Sherrin Frances, M.A. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2010 Supervising Professor: Carolyn Guertin Borges‘ short stories such as ―The Aleph‖ and ―The Garden of Forking Paths‖ were uncanny in their foreshadowing of hypertext and internet developments in the 1990‘s. Borges‘ work was often credited as inspiration for various projects striving to make use of these ―new‖ technologies in creative ways. These projects include, for example, Stuart Moulthrop‘s seminal Storyspace work, ―Forking Paths,‖ and a MyStory project called, ―Borges Fetishization,‖ based on Greg Ulmer‘s theories of Electracy. The connection between Borges‘ situations and web-based projects such as these can be further developed through an examination of heterotopic space. The heterotopias found in Borges‘ work and in the new media projects are critically important and underexplored elements of the work. This thesis will explore the types of heterotopic spaces within Borges‘ texts, their significance within the text, the underlying political implications, and the subsequent influence they had on a selection of significant New Media theories. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................... iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS..............................................................................................................vii Chapter Page 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………..………..….. .................................... 1 2. THEORIST TURNED ARTIST ....................................................................................... 7 2.1 Moulthrop and ―Forking Paths‖......................................................................... 7 2.2 Ulmer and ―Borges Fetishization‖..................................................................... 9 2.3 Nelson and ―The Aleph‖ ................................................................................. 12 2.4 Hypertext Discourse ....................................................................................... 15 3. FROM EXUBERANCE TO ANXIETY .......................................................................... 19 3.1 Moving into Networked Communities ............................................................ 19 3.2 Hope for Revolution ....................................................................................... 21 3.3 Patterns of Structural Overlay ........................................................................ 23 3.4 The Hopes of Borges and his Characters ...................................................... 24 4. FOUCAULT AS LINK ................................................................................................... 28 4.1 Borges as Foucault‘s Inspiration .................................................................... 28 4.2 Lament in ―John Wilkins‘ Analytical Language‖ ............................................. 29 4.3 Compulsion of Desire ..................................................................................... 33 5. UTOPIAS AND HETEROTOPIAS ................................................................................ 36 5.1 Utopias ........................................................................................................... 36 5.2 Heterotopias in Language .............................................................................. 38 5.3 Physical Heterotopias .................................................................................... 40 v 6. TENSION AND SOLITUDE OF HETEROTOPIAS ...................................................... 44 6.1 Heterotopias and Social Space ...................................................................... 44 6.2 Necessary Tension ........................................................................................ 46 6.3 Natural and Mental Space .............................................................................. 47 6.4 Solitude .......................................................................................................... 51 6.5 Intensive Properties of Heterotopias .............................................................. 54 7. BORGES‘ PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL SPACES ...................................................... 57 7.1 Buenos Aires as Home and Heterotopia ........................................................ 57 7.2 Borges and Las Orillas ................................................................................... 61 7.3 Space and the Marxist Tradition .................................................................... 63 7.4 Borges Within His Own Texts ........................................................................ 65 8. A NEW PARADIGM OF NON-PLACE ......................................................................... 68 8.1 A New Generation of Borges Projects ........................................................... 68 8.2 Non-Place ....................................................................................................... 70 9. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 73 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................... 76 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION .................................................................................................. 87 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 2.1 Screen Capture of Casal‘s Project: ―Borges y You‖ ................................................................. 10 2.2 Screen Capture of Casal‘s Project: ―Meet the Fetishturgist‖ .................................................... 11 2.3 Screen Capture of Casal‘s Project: ―Advertencia Pagada‖ ...................................................... 11 2.4 Screen Capture of Das Neves‘ Project, ―The Aleph‖ ............................................................... 13 2.5 Screen Capture of Das Neves‘ Project, ―Interface‖ .................................................................. 14 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In 1970, Borges wrote about his stay in Austin, TX, while teaching at the University of Texas. He makes the comment that the friendliness and generosity of Americans ―helped me overlook skyscrapers, paper bags, television, plastics, and the unholy jungle of gadgets‖ (―Autobiographical Notes,‖ 95). At another point in the same essay, he says that he was ―unimpressed by railway trains, by propellers, by airplanes, and by electric fans‖ (62). One of his goals in his writing was to compose ―beyond the here and now, free of local color and contemporary circumstances‖ (62), and so references to technology are conspicuously absent in the bulk of his work. When they do appear it seems to be in spite of Borges‘ clear distaste for gadgets and mechanics. One must ask, then, when it comes to New Media technology, why invoke Borges? Borges‘ short stories such as ―The Aleph‖ and ―The Garden of Forking Paths,‖ from a present day perspective, seem uncanny in their foreshadowing of hypertext and New Media developments in the mid-1980‘s and early 90‘s. Works from his volumes, Ficciones and The Aleph, published between 1941 and 1949, are often cited as metaphors and as unexpected prefigures for various technologies. Stuart Moulthrop writes that ―Though they come from a time long before the advent of electronic textuality, Borges‘ stories frame fundamental questions about the limits of narrative…that inform hypertextual fiction‖ (―Reading from the Map,‖ 119). In an article called, ―Webmaster Borges,‖ author Douglas Wolk writes, ―I am not the first to point out that Borges‘ great invention, the Library of Babel, that immense, honeycombed labyrinth containing every possible text—true, false and gibberish—is a fanciful metaphor for the Web‖ (n.p.). He goes on to say that the Aleph ―is Netscape Navigator in all but name,‖ the ―Zahir…is none other than Microsoft Internet Explorer,‖ and ―The Lottery in Babylon‖ is ―a precise allegory 1 of the dot-com IPO market and internal Web commerce‖ (n.p.) In an article called,