MARC Record from marc_oapen

LEADER: 02782 am a22002653u 450
001 1004662
005 20191216
007 cu#uuu---auuuu
008 191216s|||| xx o 0 u eng |
020 $a9781947447509
020 $a9781947447516
024 7 $a10.21983/P3.0196.1.00$2doi
041 0 $aeng
042 $adc
072 7 $aDSBH$2bicssc
100 1 $aBasile, Jonathan$4aut
245 10 $aTar for Mortar: "The Library of Babel" and the Dream of Totality
260 $aEarth, Milky Way$bpunctum books$c2018
300 $a106
520 $aTar for Mortar offers an in-depth exploration of one of literature?s greatest tricksters, Jorge Luis Borges. His short story ?The Library of Babel? is a signature examplar of this playfulness, though not merely for the inverted world it imagines, where a library thought to contain all possible permutations of all letters and words and books is plumbed by pious librarians looking for divinely pre-fabricated truths. One must grapple as well with the irony of Borges?s narration, which undermines at every turn its narrator?s claims of the library?s universality, including the very possibility of exhausting meaning through combinatory processing. Borges directed readers to his non-fiction to discover the true author of the idea of the universal library. But his supposedly historical essays are notoriously riddled with false references and self-contradictions. Whether in truth or in fiction, Borges never reaches a stable conclusion about the atomic premises of the universal library ? is it possible to find a character set capable of expressing all possible meaning, or do these letters, like his stories and essays, divide from themselves in a restless incompletion? While many readers of Borges see him as presaging our digital technologies, they often give too much credit to our inventions in doing so. Those who elide the necessary incompletion of the Library of Babel compare it to the Internet on the assumption that both are total archives of all possible thought and expression. Though Borges?s imaginings lend themselves to digital creativity (libraryofbabel.info is certainly evidence of this), they do so by showing the necessary incompleteness of every totalizing project, no matter how technologically refined. Ultimately, Basile nudges readers toward the idea that a fictional/imaginary exposition can hold a certain power over technology
546 $aEnglish.
650 7 $aLiterary studies: from c 1900 -$2bicssc
653 $aLibrary of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges, technology, librarianship, digital humanities, literary studies
856 40 $uhttp://www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=1004662$zAccess full text online
856 40 $uhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/$zCreative Commons License