Lecture 2: Borges and Introduction to Structuralism

Welcome to Lecture 2!

The first group activity we did:

You have ten minutes to comment on TWO blog responses (NOT your own) and:
pose a question in response to your colleague's thinking
OR
note the similarities between your response and theirs

Some background notes on Pierre Menard and Quixote

• Protagonist aims to write his own version of Don Quixote in the 20th C (originally published 1605)
• Cervantes known to have a style that can “flower too abundantly in a way that can be a trial for the reader”
• Originally written as 2 volumes but before vol. 2 was published Avellaneda made a pirated copy!
• Revenge: Cervantes included pirated version within his story
• Wants to recreate identical text therefore MUST live identical life to Miguel de Cervantes

Becomes an act of translation
Translation (and reading) always marks the text with the signs of the translator/reader
These “marks” can be decoded
Barthes:

“We know now that text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the message of the author god) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture."

Partner Activity

• Choose ONE partner
• Share your response to Pierre Menard with your partner
• Discuss with each other the following:
• What was the most important word in the story? Why?
• If we see Pierre Menard as an act of translation, is anything “lost” or “gained” in the 20th C version?

Reading for next week:

Barthes – “Death of the Author,” define: “reality effect” - Paul and Tom
Barthes – “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” Image/Music/Text, define: “vraisemblance” - Amanda and Mandy
Jorge Luis Castillo – “Pierre Menard and the School of the Skeptics,” Hispanic Review, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Summer, 2003), pp. 415-428 - Kieren, Andy and Max

Week 1 - Introduction

This week marked the beginning of the Digital Cultures module. Off to a great start we're reading Borges' "Pierre Menard" and Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

A few questions:

In "La postulación de la realidad" Borges maintains that in order to create verisimilitude in stories (and this was the aim) the author must create and imagine

"una realidad más compleja que la declarada al lector y referir sus derivaciones y efectos" (219)

[nb. my rough translation more or less: a reality more complex than the one declared/shown to the reader and then to refer/tell of the consequences and effects.] How does this idea of creating such a complex reality fit with Pierre Mendard?

"He did not want to compose another Quixote --which is easy-- but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide--word for word and line for line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes."

"In spite of these three obstacles, Menard's fragmentary Quixote is more subtle than Cervantes'. The latter, in a clumsy fashion, opposes to the fictions of chivalry the tawdry provincial reality of his country; Menard selects as his "reality" the land of Carmen during the century of Lepanto and Lope de Vega. What a series of espagnolades that selection would have suggested to Maurice Barrès or Dr. Rodriguez Larreta! Menard eludes them with complete naturalness. In his work there are no gypsy flourishes or conquistadors or mystics or Philip the Seconds or autos da fé. He neglects or eliminates local color. This disdain points to a new conception of the historical novel."

How can the same words be so much richer? How can Cervantes' original worlds invoke only truisms but Menard's rendition point to a whole new conception of the historical novel? What might this mean for the role of culture in interpreting writing (or art etc...)? What might this imply for us today, possibly reading online those original words crafted in the 1600s through the Menardian production? (*think of how this might reconstruct the past through the contemporary and how that shapes the reader and culture*)


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Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original."

"The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity"

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original"

In terms of the digital do the terms "original" and "reproduction" hold true in the same way?

If for Benjamin the (easy) reproduction of art implies greater access which leads to a political slant, then with today's more accessible environment where Web 2.0 ethos tells us we're all experts, what role might politics play in reproduction? Is there a move from reproduction as art to digitization as content/information?