Chapter 25 - Borges and Judaism

Summary

Borges, who grew up bilingual, sought to fashion his cultural identity on multicultural lines, and his assimilation of Jewish themes must be seen as an attempt to find points of contact between Jewish and Argentinian experiences. Known for his references to the Aleph, the Kabbalah, and the Golem, Borges’s interest in Jewish culture must be understood as a training in alien metaphor, with the aim of creating aesthetic forms. The conception of a mobile language and textual structure leads to an appreciation of Borges’s stories as sites of opening and multiplicity, deriving their mobility from the damaged nature of signs. In his works Jewish topoi serve as ethical devices and wandering signifiers.