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Borges/Menard/SpinozaMike Gane aa Lecturer in Sociology , University of LoughboroughPublished online: 15 Aug 2007.

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Borges/Menard/Spinoza

Mike Gane

Abstract

The manuscript, apparently by Huguette A., which is repro-duced here, purports to give an account of a seminar paper onJorge Luis Borges' essay 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'by George Lewis. Lewis, himself obsessed by textual redupli-cations and reconstructions, presents various readings of theBorges essay and then produces his own which supports the'Spinozism' of Menard. However, the manuscript could, perhaps,be read as une lettre d'amour as well as an Amor intellectualisDei.1

A close friend of mine, Huguette A., recently lent me some booksand magazines. In one of them, Spinoza's On The Improvement OfThe Understanding, I discovered some manuscript pages. It was afragment of an autobiographical essay written, it seemed, inHuguette's hand. The first page has a piece missing from the tophalf so the fragment begins in mid-sentence.

...circumstances at Leiden in 1969. I had become friendlywith an American undergraduate called George Lewis. WhenI met him in November 1969 I was delighted since I hadn'tseen him for some time. He told me that he had come in tothe University to give a paper, a paper which had involved dif-ficulties of an unusual kind. He told me that some weeks be-fore he had parted with his friend Wiclif. (I never knew whetherthis was a surname or Christian name: if it was a nickname howhad it been acquired I wondered?) He had 'replaced' Wiclif witha new girlfriend, but his troubles were far from being resolvedfor from the first the new girlfriend seemed, in many curiousrespects, 'identical' with Wiclif, he said. She even sat, for in-stance, in exactly the place Wiclif had habitually used in theLibrary.

Almost from the start, however, said George, there was some-thing odd about her: she seemed to possess a secret book. HeEconomy and Society Volume 9 Number 4 November 1980© RKP 1980 0308-5147/80/0904 0404 $1.50/1

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swore he had seen her reading it, but whenever he approachedher the book would slip out of sight. He confessed that he hadsearched through her things at the flat but could not locate it. She,for her part, denied that such a book existed. From a certainmoment he had become, he admitted to me, obsessively interestedin the possible nature of the book: was it an autobiography inwhich details of their lives were inscribed? Was it a novel writtenby her? Was it a diary containing a series of frank comments abouthim? Was it perhaps a work of private fiction written for her bysomeone else: who was this someone? Was it, he speculated, asacred book?

Since she continued to deny its existence, he tried all kinds ofstratagems to get her to reveal it. His latest was to take up thetheory of authorship and to discuss this with her in a provocativemanner. On one occasion her response was one of disdainful con-cern, on another mild amusement tinged with sadness. He nowdiscovered that a response was never repeated. He was never ableto 'recreate' exactly a previous mood, and therefore could nevermake progress. He became aware that each time he looked at hersome detail was always different: eyes, hair, expression.. . Onenight he admitted, he had woken at four and had used a magni-fying glass to check the authenticity of the conclusion. Was herface some strange, enchanted mask? He himself changed. Hebecame frightened to let her out of his sight. He marvelled at thesubtleties of such barely perceptible transitions.

Then came an important but enigmatic event. He had dreamt inthe very paper he had written on the theory of authorship he haddiscovered just what the secret book was, but, in some distress,could not recall it, nor, on re-reading the paper he had writtencould he decipher it. He had, he said, re-read his paper many times,searching without success. He then became frightened that tochange the paper in any way might risk the loss of the secret. Ina calm voice he asked me if I would help him by coming to hisseminar in the afternoon. I replied that I would, and later thatday I went to the appointed room. George, looking slightlyuneasy, began his paper.

Borges' story 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote',2 couldbe taken, I suggest, as a fertile text in four overlapping areas inSociology: sociology of religion, sociology of knowledge, sociologyof literature, and sociological theory. In all four areas it wouldhave a similar function — to raise the question of the nature ofreflexivity and authorship and the question of reading. That itdoes so in a striking and unusual way only serves to increase itsvalue.

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First of all let me quickly outline the story. Its form is clear.The critic of the story (first-person narrator) writes to rectify afallacious interpretation of the work of Menard. He refers to'eminent testimonies' (literary ladies) who will authenticate hisauthority to speak on Menard. He then gives a complete list ofMenard's 'visible' work, some nineteen items. The other part, the'invisible' but 'interminably heroic' aspects of Menard's work arediscussed with reference to parts of Don Quixote and a letterdated 30th September 1934. The rest of the piece presents extractsof this letter, a quotation from Don Quixote and commentaryfrom the critic.

The argument of the story is as follows: Menard refuses com-plete identification (in the manner of Novalis) with Cervantes inwriting Quixote, or to present an equivalent of Hamlet on theCannebiere (as do 'parasitic books'), or to reduplicate Daudet'sidea of presenting two figures in one. He chose not to copy it,transcribe it, nor to alter it in free paraphrase. He wanted to'produce a few pages which would coincide' with those of Cervantes.He thought of two methods of doing this: the first, to beCervantes, which he rejected; and the other, to be Menard 'andreach the Quixote through the experiences of Pierre Menard'. Thislatter choice has implications for his choice of sections of thework to attempt this feat, he leaves out the autobiographicalsections. Menard says that writing the Quixote in this way makesthe work realize its inevitability, whereas Cervantes had the aid ofchance and 'the inertias of language and invention'. Menard'swriting is governed by two rules: first try out variations andsecond sacrifice them to the original and account for this 'in anirrefutable manner'. The existence of the Quixote itself acts as anatural hindrance. For Menard the Quixote deliberately neglectslocal colour thus he begins a 'new conception of the historicalnovel'. He treats isolated chapters: in Chapter XXXVIII whereQuixote speaks of the relative virtue of arms and letters, the criticremarks on the remarkable identity of Cervantes and Menard andfour possible reasons are entertained. A psychological accountsuggested by Mme. Bachelier (the authoress of the fallaciouscatalogue), or Menard in transcribing, or it may be the influence ofNietzsche, or Menard may deliberately have proposed an ideacontrary to his own. The critic supports the third and fourthsuggestions. Then two quotations from the work of Cervantes andMenard are cited (they are identical phrases) by the critic whoconcludes that Menard's is superior, because richer. Finally,Menard concludes that 'every man should be capable of all ideas',the critic concludes that Menard has 'enriched the . . . rudimentaryart of reading: this new . . . technique . . . of . . . erroneous attri-bution.'

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It is possible at this point to take up the idea of suggestingalternative authors for this essay other than Borges. For example,the idea that the objective meaning of the text, an event, or a life,can be lost only indicates a purely secular conception of historyand time. If the essay proposed the idea that a life might be thoughtof as unforgettable 'even if all men had forgotten i t . . . it wouldpoint to a requirement not satisfied by man and, simultaneously,to a realm in which is could be satisfied: the memory of God.'3

This quotation from Walter Benjamin's early work is a possiblecoincidence with Borges' intent.

The insistence on the 'identity' of words in Cervantes andMenard contrasts sharply with the narrative technique of RaymondRoussel. Roussel developed an unusual technique whereby a workwould begin with a specific set of words (expression, quotations)and through the work make a rational transition towards anotherset which was virtually identical. The logic is thus purely imprisonedin the original language of composition. The essay here howeverplays on identity and in one possible interpretation could be seenas an anarchic response to Roussel which plays securely buthumorously on the infirmity of repetition. Such a response toRoussel may have been imagined by Foucault who wrote a studyof Roussel. After all Foucault has written a defence of sodomy.4

Or it could be read as an indulgent gesture which questionsfrom a position of superiority the emptiness of contemporaryculture. Culture is reproduced but has become 'richer' only in themode of irony. One Marxist critic has written of Eliot's TheWaste Land: "The reader who finds his or her access to the poem's'meaning' baulked by its inscrutable gesturing off stage is alreadyin possession of that 'meaning' without knowing it. Culturescollapse, but Culture survives, and its form is The Waste Land: thisis the ideological gesture of the text. . . \ s The suggestion that thestory is by T. S. Eliotwould support the critical reading of Menard'sproject as essentially philistine. The ambiguity of Borges' ownposition is then thrown into relief.

It is clear, then, initially, and perhaps naively, that reading andauthorship are linked. But what of actual readings of the story?It is clear that a considerable variation may be found here. I present abrief account of some of them, and then will provide one of myown.

Silverman David Silverman's electic essay on this story can befound in Reading Castenada (1975). (The revelation that Casten-ada's own works might be fictional [and not the anthropology heclaimed6] does not deter Silverman. Castenada's doctoral thesisposes an acute question of the relevance and value of fictionaldiscourses for social science but 'it does not matter in the least

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whether any or all of the "events" reported by Castenada ever"took place'".7) Silverman is interested in the Menard storybecause it plays on the irony of 'the historical character of ourproduction (of texts, of selves) . . . as we read . . . we locate our-selves in time'. Menard in one sense is Castenada as he poses thequestion of historicity, and the retrieval of tradition. 8

Macherey The essay by Macherey on Borges (1964) forms thesubject of a comment on the fictional theory of narrative in ATheory of Literary Production (1978). Although the story ofMenard, says Macherey, plays with the problem of identity anddifference, the main thrust of the story is to suggest that readingis always directly related to writing. 'The meaning of Menard'sapologue is now obvious', he says, 'reading is in the end only areflection of the wager of writing (and not vice versa); the hesi-tations of reading, reproduce, perhaps by distortion, the modifi-cations inscribed in the narrative itself. The book is always incom-plete because it harbours the possibility of inexhaustible variety.'9

Thus Macherey, who himself wishes to break the religious myth ofreading finds in Borges a reflection on this break: the work is readwhile it is written.

Steiner Steiner (1976) notices that Menard's 'visible' work,the bibliography, is not accidental. It reveals that Menard is verymuch aware of the problem of developing a universal language.Even the chapter which Menard himself selects for his work isconcerned with the Quixote translated from Arabic into Spanish.Not a copy but a translation, and Menard, like the translator, seeksto negate time and distance. In opposition to Macherey, Steinerargues that when Menard comes near to succeeding he enters acrisis of identity for Menard is a mystic. The story is, says Steiner,the 'most acute commentary anyone has offered on translation.'10

Steiner's own book is subtitled 'Aspects of Language and Transla-tion', and in an attempt to reflect on the issues of translation ofmeaning, reading Cervantes and Borges to this end.

Sturrock For John Sturrock, the story is an illustration of aphilosophical problem of dialectics. The bibliography again isinvoked as it contains references to chess. Menard constitutes him-self as an adversary in a game which strictly parallels that of chess,written though by a philosopher (who demonstrates the 'immateria-lity of fictional objects') in a fictional mode. The writer has tofind a 'principle of division' since only then can the production offiction occur. But in Menard's case the 'ambition is so pervertedthat the synthesis he eventually produces is identical with thethesis plan which he first began. The dialectical process seems tobe short-circuited. The identity is purely t e x t u a l . . . ' " Sturrock's

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general argument is that Borges' themes are principally philoso-phical, and he finds this confirmed in this story.

Borinsky Having outlined enthusiastic and laudatory readingsthis one is hostile (Alicia Borinsky: 'Repetition, Museums, Libraries:J. Borges'). She takes an image, from Borges, of a monkey, whosits while the writer writes and when he is finished drinks theremaining ink. She uses this as an image for the anonymity of thatother which is active alongside the author: 'the monkey is thewriter if every writing is a rewriting.' Pierre Menard is 'the mostobvious embodiment of the monkey's work'. Understanding thedifference between the two passages of Quixote is possible onlythrough understanding their authors, she suggests. The criticregards Menard's as superior because it is a 'higher level of artifice. . . displacement and anachronism.' But there is an obvious flaw inMenard's position, for he believed that the Cervantes' work wasan act of spontaneous invention whereas it is clear from the textthat Cervantes was rewriting a work by the moor Cid HameteBenengeli. So Menard has not understood 'the status of the piecehe has written . . . his rewriting is, in fact, a misreading. But theform of the error . . . is a simulacrum of the "original" situationwhich is, already, devoid of the kind of anteriority conveyed by afixed producer.' The critic, who evidently sides with Menard in theNimes literacy circle takes the place of Menard and takes theopportunity to make an intervention in these circles. The under-lying struggle therefore concerns the meaning of literature andculture as against barbarism. The laughter generated by the story isfocused, against 'ignorance' which succeeds only to the extent thatthere is a complicity between 'good readers'. The laughter is aimedat both Menard and the critic since the latter shares Menard'sshallowness. This implies a complicity behind the text betweenactual writer and reader: the Nimes enterprise is to be scornedbecause it involves a basic misunderstanding of what good litera-ture is all about ' . . . our laughter is the effect of that conspiracyoverdetermining the reading.' Literal repetition is naive. The ideaof anonymous literature is brought into doubt. Far from themirror creating a great value in literary endeavour it producesnothing. The whole fabricated story of Menard is only possiblebecause of the specular corroborations of the complicit reviewer.

Borinsky now invokes a class analysis as the basis for an under-standing of the Menard story: to locate the intellectual aristocracyin the political history of Argentina. The 'neutrality' of the textacquires significance against that national background. The initialstruggle in Argentina involved an antagonism between the cultureof Buenos Aires and the backward provinces. The struggle forliteracy, a neutral truth, is a struggle for Europe. The dividing

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lines are drawn and redrawn: a left and a right tradition develops.Borges hears a different lineage from Peron, but the appearance ofa third term, the left based on the working class, effects a changein the space of the re-enactment so that the two former lines uniteagainst the left. She concludes: 'By thinking of some of thehumorous effects of his texts as the result of a complicity amonggood readers we have found a place for the exchange which wouldotherwise remain unmarked, neutral, universal. Our reading opensup puzzling analogies between the Borges we encountered and aPeron eager to dilute any direct reference to class antagonism.' Ineffect, therefore, Borges is able to support a 'neutral' culturaldrive, which finds its eventual agents are fascists, which continues,paradoxically, a task begun by Peron, whom Borges opposed.Borinsky concludes: 'All this cataloguing and exhibiting is renderedpossible... by the suspicion that "neutral" discourses workagainst themselves.'12

Monegal This account claims to provide a biographically basedanalysis of the genesis of the Menard story in Borges' own develop-ment. The idea apparently grew out of another project wherebyBorges was attempting to draw up a document left by an obscuremaster. A young French writer discovers the document is a list ofthings a writer should not do. One of these is that a writer shouldshun praise or censure. Thus the origin of the idea lies in Borges'attempt to write about fame and vanity. But in the developed idea'Menard's mad pursuit becomes the centre of the story.' The youngFrench writer becomes the narrator. 'The story is presented as aparody of the kind of article written in defence of a misunder-stood genius by one of his followers.... It becomes a brilliantparody of French literary life, with its touches of bigotry, anti-semitism, and adulation of the upper classes.'

Monegal notes that the phrase Borges gives as the successfully'reconstructed' Cervantes was already satirical and contained aparody of the literary model Cervantes was attempting to discredit;since the story was already in existence, Quixote is already a recon-struction. But the critic does not develop this, rather he turns tothe possibility that this project, unknown to Menard (and herethere is a contradiction perhaps), has opened up the possibilityof a 'new poetics, based not on the actual writing but on its read-ing'. Monegal cites Borges: 'that imminence of revelation that isnot yet produced is, perhaps, the aesthetic reality'.13

Lewis Finally, I come to my own reading. I suggest that thepositions of Menard and the critic are not identical and the differ-ences between them should be made the focus of a reading of thestory. Menard's letter fragments, if read together, reveal a strikingposition: the first implies that the product of his labour is God,

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the second that his project is only possible if he becomes immortal,the third that Cervantes had the collaboration of the devil, and thefourth that he intends or understands (Sturrock) that in the futureeveryman will 'be capable of all ideas'. Clearly a theological position.What the critic does with these fragments is to turn them intotheir opposite, to secularize them. He says, for example, 'Menard(perhaps without wanting to) has enriched . . . the art of reading.'And in suggesting the attribution of the Imitatto Christi to JamesJoyce, he remarks ironically and sarcastically 'is this not a sufficientrenovation of its tenuous spiritual indications?' What Menardproposed was a new order of writing; the critic proposes a newtechnique of reading by erroneous attribution.

Menard wants to eradicate contingency and realize — in anabsolute sense — the text's necessity. He refuses to be Cervantes,thus poses the question of reading in the most active possiblemanner: writing. The critic on the other hand translates this intoa technique of reading where contingency (choice of erroneousauthor) is given free licence, and the outcome is perhaps unserious.The meaning of the story now becomes clear: the choice presentedconcerns a rigorous theology of the author or, a frivolous game ofattributions.14 Menard's position is superior because his rigourincludes the critique of inertias of spontaneous invention, so thatin the process of the sacrifice of the variation to the original andits rationalization of the effect is the fullest possible knowledge ofnecessity, even though this may not be achieved in practice. Onthe other hand, the author's account alters Menard's rigorousposition for it reads Menard's Quixote as if Menard was the errone-ously attributed author (hence the contrast with William Jamesand Russell etc.). For Menard, it is clear, these questions were onlyancillary within a deeper project. The critic is suggesting that heputs the possibility of a theological position of understandingtextual determination in doubt, though the project to attain itproduces a by-product, a new technique of reading — hardlywhat was sought by Menard. (How Borges would read this storyis an open question.)

The meaning of the Menard story has been constructed withreference to authors who have 'quoted' sections of it and haveselected various paths across it. Indeed they quote Menard, just asthe critic himself has selected passages from Menard. The three'imaginary' authors constructed earlier are understood in relationto the text in exactly the same way. One author constructs withreference to a selection, another author constructs by providingan extension to the text. In quoting from the story, however, noneof the readers have understood the text in a Menardian manner(and realized its necessity), they have all simply used the 'final

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term of a demonstration' (a reference no doubt to Spinoza'scritique of 'conclusions without premises') but whereas Menardproduced then destroyed his premises, our readings use onlyunproduced conclusions, (whose necessity is barely grasped). Itis not surprising that even closely related readings' result in differ-ing judgements: Sturrock sees in Menard's dialectic a 'pervertedambition', whereas my own reading sees his ambition as 'divine'.

Finally, I want to turn now in the light of the Menard story andits readings to the relation between author, text and reader. In-stead of the laughter at Menard arising out of a complicity of'good readers' defined in terms of degree of civilization (Borinsky)the laughter arises out of an embarrassment at the realization ofhis 'divine' ambition and its implication. His position suggeststhat to know a text, that is to be able to reproduce it, to know itsnecessity, is to acquire divinity. His task is not undertaken naively(to be Cervantes) it is undertaken 'critically' (remaining Menard).He challenges the fact of Cervantes' superiority not as a writer butas a theorist, for Cervantes remains profoundly unconscious of hissources which perhaps are the true creators of his work: language,other 'inertias', though he is aware that he is translating somethingas is evident in his references to the moor's text.ls The reductionof chance in the production of conscious knowledge of the text isthe aim of the project. But this is posed by Menard in profligatemanner, since he destroys it. His theoretical productivity remainedpersonal, private, subjective. There exists the testimony of theauthor-critic as the sole source of any real authenticity though thisagain is indirect and provides no actual theoretical knowledge,indeed this witness betrays the very effort.

Much of the evident interest which Borges has evoked stemsfrom the fact that his project seems to involve an extra-literaryelement. All of the readings I have quoted have argued that theMenard story provides commentary on tradition, time, translation,dialectics, God, reading, or politics, etc. In this sense Borges istaken as providing the instance of fictional theory, either beyondliterature or, most notably reflexively on literature — writing. Theproblem of the specificity of this instance, in its difference withother modes of theoretical discourse is provoked, not answered.But Borges does not seek to move to other modalities, though heis not mute on them. The literary mode is for him the chosenmode of the imagination, since the force of the imagination isnecessary to speak at one level removed from its object: the imageis the product of a censor. A paradox is apparent at this pointsince Borges appears a pedantic realist or documentor. The aimof this referential illusion is to produce a literary effect, an intel-lectual aesthetic and indirect philosophy. It would entirely ruin

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the Menard story as literature had the theoretical knowledgeattained by Menard been presented. It is sufficient that Borges hasproduced the story as the effect of such imagined knowledge (andits destruction and betrayal).

The Menard story can therefore be taken as a provocation totheory. Menard himself poses the Spinozist question of the Intel-lect and the Imagination. In so far as the ontological link betweenauthor and text is the site of a question Menard takes the link inits strongest and most critical reflection. Understanding the textcannot simply mean to comprehend it. It is to understand theconditions of its determinate reproduction. The problem is pointedup clearly in a different, though relevant articulation, by Althusser(another Spinozist) in talking of Solzhenitsyn and the 'Cult ofPersonality' in Russia: 'a novel of the "cult", however profound,may draw attention to its "lived" effects, but it cannot give anunderstanding of it; it may put the question of the "cult" on theagenda, but it cannot define the means which will make it possibleto remedy these effects.'16 This theoretical knowledge whichliterature can indicate it can never provide in a direct manner.Menard's 'reasoning' was burnt, welearn from the critic, but we gainan impression of the space which this knowledge would occupy,and this is enough to divert the sceptical author to another path.In this respect the story, in so far as the author's view is adopted,closes off the path to non-fictional theorizing.

The path that is indicated (by the critic) is that of erroneousattribution. This challenges the ontological link from authorposition, and because secularized, is perhaps more acceptable? Forexample could not the apparent regression in Althusser from aposition of giving primacy to theoretical knowledge, to an onto-theology of Marx be countered and criticised? The function of thisidea in theory more generally could produce interesting and in-structive results because it would force open a number of conven-tional closed doors. Returning, as Althusser does, to Marx's ex-periences merely acts to resurrect the sanctity of authoriality. It isindeed naive to imagine the imminent end of sterile artifices thatare enshrined in the 'great men', or the emergence in the formsenvisaged by Shelley or Wollflin of a communism of culturepresaged by communist oral culture. This should be based on afatal confusion of personal and private.17 In fact erroneousattribution is parasitic on such culture, though that is not neces-sarily a good reason to suppress it. One of the fundamental issueswhich this idea raises is that of the role of popular or even esotericpresentations of social analyses. Marxism is popularly presented informs quite remote from those of Marx and in conditions quitedifferent from those envisaged by Marx, yet forcibly defined in aMarxist image nonetheless.

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The important translation of European sociology into the anglo-saxon cultures in the interwar years by such figures as TalcottParsons could in many respects be said to have produced theerroneous reality of correct attribution. More than one thesis hasbeen devoted to a problem produced entirely as an effect oftranslation inadequacies; and more recently the tide has turned sothat theses are now being written which restore the originals totheir rightful place.

Max Weber's advocacy of fictional history as a theoreticaldevice is reported by Parsons, via von Schelting. It must be said,however, that the device, though outlined after Weber's suggestionthat use of the hypothetical alternative outcome to the battle ofMarathon might throw light on the analysis of social structures ofantiquity, was never developed by Parsons or any major sociologistas a more general method. Six steps were involved in the procedure.They can be summarized as follows: in a social process of anycomplexity each element which can be established as law-governedis identified, then hypothetical elimination or alteration of thesecan be attempted and a new outcome constructed: comparisonbetween actual and hypothetical is then possible with the eventualobjective of drawing causal conclusions.1*

Fiction, for Weber, is not limited to historical conjecture, forthe 'ideal-type' itself is regarded as a Utopia, and not a reconstruc-tion of refality. Ideal types are produced by logical purification: theelements, the raw material are abstracted and recombined into anideal form. The sociology of knowledge of Karl Mannheim devel-oped, for instance in Ideology and Utopia, uses the notion thatideal types are active in society as world-views playing a dynamicor regressive role in the social process. Sociology appears in thisperspective in the following curious form. 'Ideas which correspondto the concretely existing and de facto order are designated as'adequate' and structurally congruous. These are relatively rareand only a mind that has been sociologically fully clarified oper-ates with situationally congruous ideas and motives.'18 So sociologymay play the role here that is, in some respects, an inversion ofthat proposed by Weber.

A Marxist variation to this problem is the Lukacs-Goldmannapproach to the literary work. Goldmann, producing a structuralistcontinuation of Lukacs, came to view the great literary work asan 'ideal-typical' fictional expression of a class fraction's worldvision: the non-conscious' structured unity of the great work ishomologous with the unity of the world vision. Again, a series of'natural' pure types are produced, and this is the object of thesociology of literature: the great text is 'saved' (Goldmann: 1969).A Goldmannesque reading of Don Quixote would of course be

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possible (Pierre Vilar has indeed put forward the view that thework represents the Spanish tragic vision.19 ) It is a small step toregard Marx's work as a theoretical Utopia expressing the worldview of the proletariat in the age of scientific forms.

Borges of course is interested in Utopias.20 In a piece called'Utopia of a tired man' (1979: 64—70) he describes a meeting witha man, called Someone, who lives, sub specie aeternitatis, in a landwhere printing has been abolished. The Utopia appears as a bleakcommunism. Borges describes the piece as 'honest and melancholy'(1979: 93).

It is therefore not novel to suggest a connection between fictionand theory. The whole of this connection is polarized towards therole of fiction as knowledge. Knowledge assumes the form ofrationally unified structures: ideal forms, pure types etc. Borgeshowever offers a fictional challenge to this as Foucault has per-ceived. Initially stimulated by the idea of the theme of reflexity,infinity and death he proposed the project of classifying thedominant forms of reflexivity in European culture 'a generalanalysis of all the forms of re-duplication of language... theseforms . . . are of a limited number and it should be possible tolist them in their entirety' (1977: 57). And The Order of Thingshas a Preface which again takes up Borges as stimulant, but thistime as critic of the idea of Utopia and as proponent of whatFoucault calls Heterotopias: which disturb 'because they make itimpossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tanglecommon names, because they destroy "syntax" in advance, andnot only the syntax with which we construct sentences but alsothat less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next toand also opposite one another) to "hold together"... heterotopias(such as those to be found so often in Borges) dessicate speech,stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammarat its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism ofour sentences.'21 Foucault's example is taken from the essay byBorges called 'The analytical Language of John Wilkins'.22 Wilkins'classifications of the universe produce ambiguities which recall theCelestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. 'On those remotepages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those thatbelong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that aretrained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g)stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) thosethat tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) thosedrawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (1) others, (m) thosethat have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble fliesfrom a distance.' Borges goes on to explain why some such classi-fication can not be other than arbitrary: 'there is no universe in the

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organic, unifying sense inherent in that ambiguous word . . . ifthere is, we must conjecture the words, the definitions, the etymolo-gies, the synonymies of God's secret dictionary.' The generalline of theoretical commentary and theoretical fiction provokedFoucault, at least, to theory, in another mode, in The Order ofThings.

The heterotopia of the Menard story concerns the relation:author—text—reader—context. The (religious) utopia-myth ofreading, which is conventional, postulates the effect of the creativewriter and the consuming reader, where the text retains its 'exter-nal' message. The dialectic at work here in Bbrges' critique suggeststextual 'identity' under changing conditions becomes 'difference'.(The logic of this dialectic in Borges in uneven and complex (hetero-topic): for 'who is Borges?' is a fundamental issue. For Borinskyhe is a confused antidemocrat. For some others the fact of Borges'right-wing political affiliation is sufficient reason for censorship:not reading his works.) The dialectic is also active in the reflexiveparadox: the mirror in Cervantes23 becomes the problem ofknowledge which Menard attempts to attain (of the necessity oftextual production) which, as Menard knows, is not a mirror inthe same sense, if it is a mirror at all. Here Macherey is right:theoretical knowledge of the text is not 'in' the text it is along-side it. In this way it is possible to see Menard, like Macherey, as aSpinozist. The theology of the ontological-author is a product ofthe imagination: the work of the intellect works in a differentmode. In so far as this is successful the 'author' 'knows' the'necessity' of 'his' 'work'.

At this point, George's paper at an end, he said he had onefinal remark to make. A few minutes before giving the paper hehad come across a remarkable new story by Borges which hadcaused him some anguish. It was a story about a monstrous book,a book without a beginning or end, which had created a monsterout of the reader. He began to quote:

The text was closely printed, and it was ordered in versicles. Inthe upper corners of the pages were Arabic numbers. I noticed thatone left-hand page bore the number (let us say) 40,514 and thefacing right-hand page 999. I turned the leaf; it was numberedwith 8 digits. It also bore a small illustration . . . an anchor drawnwith pen and ink. . . .

I noticed my place and closed the book. At once I reopened it.Page by page, in vain, I looked for the illustration of the anchor...

I went to bed and did not sleep. At three or four in the morning,I turned on the light. I got down the impossible book and leafedthrough its pages. On one of them I saw engraved a mark. The

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upper corner of the page carried a number which I no longer recall,elevated to the ninth power.

I showed no one my treasure. To the luck of owning it wasadded the fear of having it stolen . . . A prisoner of the book, Ialmost never went out anymore. After studying its frayed spineand covers with a magnifying glass, I rejected the possibility of acontrivance of any sor t . . . At night in the meagre intervals myinsomnia granted, I dreamed of the book.

Summer came and went, and I realized that the book wasmonstrous. What good did it do me to think that I, who lookedat the volume with my eyes, who held it in my hands, was any lessmonstrous? 24

He put the book down.What shocked him most of all, he said, was something purely

contingent. This book had taken the place, in the life of theauthor, of a Wiclif bible.

I knew at that instant he knew the secret'his dream had revealedto him.

I did not see George very often after that. He mentioned to meat one of our subsequent meetings that he had become a hermit,devoting himself to a 'reconstruction' of the Latin original ofSpinoza's works after reading Elwes' criticism that Spinoza'sLatin lacked 'the niceties of scholarship'.

For my part I simply wish I could see more of him.

At this point the manuscript broke off. I must return to recon-structing Spinoza.

G.L.

Notes

1. Ideally at this point the reader should read the 'story' 'Pierre Menard,Author of the Quixote' by J. L. Borges. The paper, here, puts into playcertain Borgesian techniques, and the effect of pastiche is entirely intended.(Roy Gottfried [1978] has developed a diagramatic representation of anotherBorges story; it would be quite feasible to develop a similar one for thispaper.) A version of this paper read at the Leicester University Department ofSociology Staff Seminar was preceded by circulation of the Borges story butwithout attribution. I would like to thank members of the Department forthe lively and helpful discussion which followed my paper.2. J. L. Borges (1970).3. Quoted by G. Steiner (1976: 63).4. M. Foucault, 'Arseholes Possessed' in Three Million Perverts. Recherches,March 1973 (unsigned article).5. Terry Eagleton (1978: 149).6. Richard de Mille, Castenada's Journey (1978), London: Sphere Books.7. D. Silverman (1975: xi).

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8. D. Silverman (1975: 100).9. P. Macherey (1978: 250).10. G. Steiner (1976: 67-73).11. J. Sturrock (1977: 167).12. Borinsky's argument appears to overlook the fact that Don Quixoteis not 'neutral', or that its neutralisation has to be realized by Menard.Though this terminology appears remote from the whole project.13. E. Monegal (1978: 327-331).14. This is not altogether unambiguous. The theology of the author ispossible in at least two modes: an ontotheology which regards the author assubject, and a natural theology which, in its Spinozist form, attacks the ideaof subject-author. It is the latter which is suggested as appropriate here.15. Though Borinsky and Monegal argue that Menard is naive here, sincethey regard Menard as being ignorant of Quixote as translation and of Cervantes'parody, it is quite possible to argue that they have not understood the dif-ference between Cervantes' conception of spontaneity as reproduction andMenard's conception of the intellectual understanding of necessity as deter-minism.16. L. Althusser (1971: 205).17. Another important dimension here is the question of public responsibilityof texts. This issue is discussed with reference to Marx and Engels in 1850 byJeffrey Mehlman (1977: 5-6). Unfortunately Mehlman gets in to pseudo-profundities such as 'what is unheimlich about the unheimlich is that abso-lutely anything may be unheimlich . . .'18. T. Parsons (1964: 610-24).19. Pierre Vilar, 'The Age of Don Quixote', in: NLR, 68 July-August 1971.20. J. E. Irby, 'Borges and the Idea of Utopia', in: L. Dunham and I. Ivask(1971: 35-45).21. M. Foucault (1970: xviii).22. J. L. Borges (1964: 101-5).23. J. L. Borges (1970: 228-231).24. J. L. Borges (1979: 88-91).

References

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Borinsky, A (1977) 'Repetition, Museums,Libraries: J. L. Borges', in: Glyph 2, 1977,Baltimore and London: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press.Christ, R. J. (1969) The Narrow Act.Borges' Act of Allusion, London: Univer-sity of London Press.Dunham, L. and Ivask, I. The CardinalPoints of Borges, University of OklahomaPress.Eagleton, T. (1978) Criticism andIdeology, London: New Left ReviewEditions.Foucault, M. (1970) The Order of Things,London: Tavistock.Foucault, M. (1977) Language, CounterMemory, Practice, Cornell UniversityPress.

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Goldmann, L. (1969) The Human Sciencesand Philosophy, London: Cape.Gottfried, R. (1978) 'Jorge Luis Borges'"The Garden of Forking Paths'" In:Structuralist Review, Vol. 2, No. 1. Winter1978. City University of New York.Macherey, P. (1978) A Theory of LiteraryProduction, London R.K.P.Mannheim, K. (1970) Ideology andUtopia, London: Routledge and KeganPaul.Mehlman, J. (1977) Revolution andRepetition, University of California Press.

Monegal, E. R. (1978) Jorge Luis Borges,N. York: E. P. Dutton.Parsons, T. (1964) The Structure ofSocial Action, N. York: Free Press.Silverman, D. (1975) Reading Castenada,London: R.K.P.Stabb, M. S. (1970) Jorge Luis Borges,N. York: Twayne Publishers.Steiner, G. (1976) After Babel, OxfordUniversity Press.Sturrock, J. (1977) Paper Tigers, Oxford:Clarendon Press.

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