The Borges Matrix

In June 1993, I found myself in Les Eyzies de Tayac, a village in South West France famous for its numerous prehistoric sites. Though to say that I “found” myself in the Dordogne is perhaps too contingent an expression. My visit was entirely intentional. In any case, most particulars of the journey are irrelevant to this account except that, as always, I took with me a diverse supply reading matter. Actually, I often find that I don’t get round to much reading whilst travelling, but in this case, despite some convivial company, I systematically worked through my books, and as I did so began to notice a certain pattern emerging.

However, before describing this pattern any further, and to pre-empt any accusation that this story is or was contrived, it is necessary to recount how I collected my “bibliography”. For the sake of argument, I take the acquisition of these books in a chronological, though not necessarily causal sequence. The first book, Narratives of Human Evolution (Landau, 1991) , was borrowed from a friend in Southampton. I have a long-standing interested in Landau’s work, although in fact the book says little more than her previous articles. Then, just after Christmas of 1992, I came across Keith Tester’s (1991) Animals and Society whilst looking for a completely different book in the Charing Cross Road branch of Waterstone’s. Animal rights, and the consequences of Darwinism for our relationship with other species, are another interest of mine, and so Tester was added to my list of future reading.

After some lapse of time I bought the third and fourth books, Labyrinths andThe Book of Imaginary Beings (Borges, 1970; 1974) , at a local book shop in North London. By reputation I had been interested in Borges for some time and these were the only titles in the shop. Several weeks (and several hundred miles) later I paid a long intended visit to Kelmscott Manor, the home of William Morris, and bought a copy of E.P. Thompson’s (1976) William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. A week or so later I acquired The Magic Toyshop (Carter, 1967) during a return visit to North London. The choice was somewhat impulsive and arbitrary; I was interested in Angela Carter and having gone out to buy something else (not for once a book) simply picked this title at random. Finally, having returned to France and on my way to Les Eyzies, I decided I needed more Angela Carter and whilst visiting the vast FNAC book shop in Paris’ Forum des Halles, I found Expletives Deleted (Carter, 1992) that seemed to be the only Angela Carter in the English language section.

Such perhaps is the general shape of my life; a sequence of books heard of, encountered, bought, borrowed and read, interspersed by quite irrelevant activities. In the Paris appartement where I had lived since October 1992 I had accumulated many books and articles. So on quitting the appartement for Les Eyzies I resolved to store most of my belongings at my Paris office, just taking the above mentioned titles to amuse myself in odd moments. It was only after several weeks in Les Eyzies, the weather alternating between buzzing heat and spectacular storms, that I began to notice the Borges Matrix. This, I suppose, is a rather irrational, perhaps romantic title, inspired by Borges’ labyrinthine writings and the following facts.

Reading Tester’s irritatingly smug prose, I came across a reference to Borges, quoted from the introduction of Foucault (1970), where the latter describes his reaction to “a story by Borges which set out a taxonomy of animals including categories such as ‘embalmed,’ ‘fabulous,’ ‘included in the present classification.’ “ (Tester,1991:77) . Given Tester’s obsession with the idea that any moral argument can be reduced to taxonomy, the reference was entirely appropriate, and I surmised that Foucault was referring to The Book of Imaginary Beings .

Then I began to notice other connections; Angela Carter acknowledges the influence of Borges “magic realism,” and in her (1992) book of essays she refers to Borges four times; once in an essay on Jane Eyre, elsewhere in critiques of Michael Moorcock, Walter De La Mare and James Joyce. It also struck me that Tester (1991: 197-8; 201) had referred to Carter’s (1979) story “The Company of Wolves.” Although frankly it seemed to me that in his obsession with boundaries between humanity and nature he had entirely missed the point of the story.

Other connections came thick and fast. Landau(1991) also refers to Borges (1970) , relating the necessity of contingent narrative to the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths.” Tester devotes considerable attention to the ideas of George Bernard Shaw; Shaw was a vegetarian, antivivisectionist and close friend of William Morris (he almost married Morris’ daughter May). Meanwhile, in Labyrinths, one finds Borges article entitled, A note on (towards) Bernard Shaw, and in The Book of Imaginary Beings (1974: 78, 87-88) Borges also mentions William Morris poem The Life and Death of Jason and quotes at length from Morris’ cycle of poems The Earthly Paradise. Carter (1992: 11) , in turn, also mentions Morris in a review of Milorad Pavic’s Borgesian Dictionary of the Kazars.

Apart from these direct interrelations, there are, of course, other more categorical connections. Morris, Carter, Landau and Borges share an interest in folktales. The first two wrote and collected them, Borges wove them into his arcane tales. Landau, following Propp (1928) , takes them as the basis of an analysis of theories of human evolution. Similarly, Borges, Carter, Landau and Tester interest themselves for various reasons in contingencies and contingent narrative. Serrendipitously, these themes become the basis of this article.

Of course, you might argue, this assemblage of texts is not arbitrary, but reflects both my (somewhat eclectic) tastes and interests and the common interests of their respective authors. Hence connections between these works are inevitable. This may be true, and yet at three distinct levels this Borges Matrix is a product of coincidence. Firstly, as noted above, I obtained these books for a variety of quite distinct reasons. Borges and Carter interest me for their magical treatment of the mundane; as Borges himself suggests of Cervantes, they avoid introducing the supernatural and thereby make the natural, ‘real,’ everyday world more mysterious. Morris, by contrast, was a practical man, and it is his concern with the intrinsic value of work “Useful work versus useless toil” (Morris, 1888) that attracts me. Tester, on the other hand, discusses a subject that is of both intellectual and ethical interest to me; the relationship between humans and other animals. Finally, Landau’s topic is of professional interest to me as a student of human evolution.

Moreover, as I have described, the books themselves were bought at different places and times and under different conditions. In some cases my choice was largely impulsive; I would eventually have got round to reading Borges and Carter, but the actual timing remains a matter of hazard. Likewise, I might add, I had not intended to borrow Landau’s book when I did. Rather, it was offered. Finally, at the third level of contingency, remains the fact that I took these particular books to Les Eyzies. Here again this was not an intentional collection, but simply those books that I had with me in Paris and had not yet got round to reading.

The problem is that one expects a causal coherence to events, especially when they are presented in narrative form. As Carter (1992: 120) remarks, there is a “kind of ominous coincidence that fiction needs to avoid if it is to be plausible” whereas “Life itself can afford to be more extrovert.” And yet, as Landau suggests, scientific accounts of life, and specifically of human evolution, do not display these extrovert tendencies. Indeed, scientists are themselves the slaves of plausible narrative structure (Medawar, 1963) , or rather they fall into the trap of interpreting life as if it had been given a narrative structure by someone. Thus most accounts of human evolution, like the folktales analysed by Propp (1928) , incorporate a “donor” (Landau, 1991 etc) ; an external agent that orchestrates the fate of humanity with the gift of tools, language, intelligence, etc.

But, of course, the non-existence of this Promethean “donor” has been the central thesis of natural science since Darwin himself confronted the problems of agency in evolution. “In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a misnomer….It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or deity….” (Darwin/Peckham, 1959:165) . Rather, natural selection is a struggle, in Darwin’s own (1859: 102) term, an “unconscious process of selection,” in which the only agents are organisms themselves (Graves, forthcoming). The radical materialism of Darwinism eliminates metaphysical causality at all levels; proximal, as the God of providence, the “donor,” and ultimate, as the “watchmaker” in Paley’s Newtonian natural theology.

What remains, then, is that causality diverges into two quite different processes. Proximate causality can be intentional agency; the writer creates a narrative, natural selection operates through the struggle for existence. Such proximate causes, agents, operate within a contextual matrix created by many ultimate causes. Thus, as Elias (1982: 229) says of civilisation, “obviously, individual people at some past time did not intend this change, this civilisation, and gradually realise it by conscious “rational” purposive ends.” Ultimate causes do not intend later consequential acts, and hence admit Carter’s “ominous coincidence.” Life is an absurd process in Camus’ (1947) terms because, at each instant, the opportunities of context are co- opted into action. Life is, in truth, a chapter of accidents.

The qualitative distinction between proximate and ultimate cause reveals the essentially paradoxical nature of Landau’s Narratives of Human Evolution. Whilst arguing that evolution is a contingent process, Landau founds her narrative model on structural principles; ultimate causes that shape all accounts of human origins. This, perhaps, is not surprising when one considers the precursor of her analysis, for Vladimir Propp (1928) is quite explicit in the connection between the structure of folktale and the biological; “it is possible to make an examination of the forms of the tale that will be as exact as the morphology of organic forms.” (quoted in Beer, 1983:197-8 ). In fact, then, Landau creates a loose circularity, taking Propp’s analogy from the organic and turning it back on organic processes.

But why, then, are there ostensibly similar structures in all accounts of human evolution? Patterns of events that conform to those found in Propp’s analysis of folktale? If we take, for example, the “functions” of “departure” or “change” in Landau’s model, it is clear that any account of a process must involve this unless it is to be trapped in a kind of Zeno’s paradox. If there is no departure, no change, there can be no process, no evolution to narrate. Similarly, one might add, the fact that all accounts of human evolution involve a “hero” is unremarkable; without agency there could be no process to describe. In one sense (Stoczkowski, 1992) , the whole of Landau’s analysis can be reduced to three banal elements; perturbation of initial equilibrium, action or counter action and establishment of a new equilibrium. But there is more to the matter.

The truth is that both folktale and accounts of human evolution are predicated upon accumulated experience of the real world, not on underlying principles of structure. The banality of Landau’s account lies in the fact that it simply reiterates true but commonplace experience. Like many structuralist analysts (Piaget being another good example), Landau attributes properties of the real world to the structure of the author’s thinking. The cycle of equilibrium, disequilibrium is projected onto the actors mind. Yet the authors of any account, as proximate causes, assemble their narratives from experience of the world, which is to say the products of ultimate causes, and in the process, as Borges says, “each writer creates his own precursors.” Like the structure of the Borges Matrix, each account of events inheres neither in its author, nor in events described, but in that action that brings author and sources together.

What, then, is the status of narrative? Can it be rescued from the contingencies that it is forced to accommodate? As Stoczkowski (1992: 8) points out, narrative is part of the wider debate surrounding the relationship between the arts and science; “le territoire légitime de la science, contrairement à ce que l’on dit parfois, n’est pas complètement séparé de celui de la narrativité, et les ordres qui règnent ici et là ne sont pas non plus entièrement contraires.” The habitual assertion that a “story” is necessarily false; that by fiction we mean something untrue; is contrasted with a science that is necessarily about truth. Hence, the concept of narrative becomes pejorative, as if by telling a “story” the scientist is revealed as a charlatan, and in the process the necessity of narrative in science is overlooked. Yet one might go further than this (and perhaps contra Stoczkowski and Gardin, 1991 ) to suggest that the goals and methods of science and art (at least literary art) are in many ways the same. For, as I have sought to argue here, reality impinges upon the constructs both of art and of science; neither is the product of a pure abstraction, but must draw its truth from embedded experience.

The poet Keats (Monckton Milnes 1927[1848]) remarked that his work could be divided between “the false beauty, proceeding from art” and “the true voice of feeling”. In similar terms, William Morris believed that cheap, mass produced goods and poor materials betrayed both the artisan and the consumer; art and useful work must proceed from experience and skill. The same point can be inferred from Borges (1970) and Carter (1992) ; the magic of literature derives not from the supernatural and the abstract, but from the magical strangeness of the ordinary. As Carter (1992: 116) says of Moorcock’s (1988) Mother London; “It isn’t really a question of ‘magic realism’, that much abused term. For Moorcock’s Londoners, nothing could be more magical than the real fabric of the city they love and the stories with which it echoes.”

The fallacy is to assume, as Tester does in his account of animal rights, that concepts and beliefs are simply a matter of taxonomic, subjective distinctions. That, to take his own example, our attitudes to vivisection and industrial animal husbandry derive solely from a concern with drawing abstract, subjective boundaries between humanity and “nature.” Rather, I suggest, ethical beliefs, as much as scientific theories or works of literature, must be compatible with real experience. Our judgement of what constitutes humane treatment of animals depends upon real experience of inhumanity towards them, not an abstract judgement concerning their taxonomic status.

Here it might appear that I am arguing for a kind of naïve empiricism; as if all accounts, including this one, are necessitated simply by empirical data; that experience of cruelty to animals will necessarily lead one to argue for animal rights. Rather, the truth of the matter is best expressed by Henry James (quoted in Beer, 1983:151 ); “Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so. He is in the perpetual predicament that the continuity of things is the whole matter with him.” Our theories and narratives are not “determined” by empirical facts alone, since each must choose his/her particular path through the matrix of evidence, much as I have chosen to follow particular themes through the Borges Matrix. Like Borges, James saw each artist as the creator of his/her own precursors.

Ultimately, then, all narratives are contingent at least two levels. As a scientist, the events that one describes are contingent; the world is in some sense absurd. But further, each attempt at explanation is a contribution to the contingencies of the world. This essay draws on the serendipitous conjunction of ideas I have called the Borges Matrix. Yet in turn it might come to form part of other matrices of ideas that I cannot foresee. Writing, however, is not in itself absurd, for each account of events, as James says, creates its own closed circle of relations. Rather, it is the reality we describe and analyse that is absurd and we must somehow accept (with Camus) that the description of this absurdity is a plausible goal.

Serendipitous Bibliography

Borges, J.L.1970 Labyrinths. Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Borges, J.L. 1974 The Book of Imaginary Beings. Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Carter, A. [1981]1967 The Magic Toyshop. London, Virago.

Carter, A. 1992 Expletives Deleted. London, Vintage.

Landau, M. 1991 Narratives of Human Evolution. London, Yale University Press.

Tester, K. 1991 Animals and Society. The Humanity of animal Rights. London, Routledge.

Thompson, E.P. 1976 William Morris. Romantic to Revolutionary. New York, Pantheon Books.

Other References.

Beer, G. 1983 Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Fiction. London, Ark Paperbacks.

Camus, A. 1975[1942] The Myth of Sisyphus. Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Carter, A. 1979 The company of wolves. IN The Bloody Chamber and other Stories. London, Virago.

Darwin, C. 1859 The Origin of Species. Everyman, London.

Darwin, C./Peckham, M. 1959 (ed) On the Origin of Species A Variorum Edition. Philadelphia.

Foucault, M. 1970 The Order of Things An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London, Routledge.

Gardin, J-C. 1991 Le Calcul et la Raison. Paris, Editions de l’Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

Graves, P.M. 1996 In search of the watchmaker. Agency in natural and cultural selection. IN H. Maschner (ed) Darwinian Archaeologies. Plenum, 165-184

Medawar, P.B.1963 Is the scientific paper a fraud? The Listener, Sept 12^th. 377-378

Monckton-Milnes, R. 1927 The Life and Letters of John Keats. London, Everyman.

Moorcock, M. 1988 Mother London . London, Secker & Warburg.

Morris, W. 1888 Useful work versus useless toil. IN Signs of Change. London, Kelmscott.

Propp, V. 1928 Morphology of the Folktale. Austin, University of Texas Press.

Stoczkowski, W. 1992 Les origines de l’homme: entre l’imaginaire commun et savant. Epistémologie, narration at banalités collectives. Gradhiva 11: 1-9

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(originally published in Southampton Archaeology’s now defunct online Journal 1994)