The Possibility of the Unicorn in Borges and Kafka

Abstract:The relationship between Jorge Luis Borges and deconstruction has been much investigated, yet rarely has this research addressed the fact that both projects share the conviction that neither language nor text exist. Obviously, neither discourse denies that language and text are there. Yet they are not, here, presences: they are not objects before a subject, hence beings, not even imaginary beings. Departing from a close reading of Jacques Derrida's insistence that "language does not exist, no one has ever encountered it," this article scrutinizes the way in which this "non-existence" opens a path for a rethinking of history, literary history, Latin American aesthetics, and Latin American cultural studies. Also offered are novel interpretations of Borges's "Funes, His Memory," "Kafka and His Precursors," and The Book of Imaginary Beings.