Borges scholar to visit campus

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor

The Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG) and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures will present noted Jorge Luis Borges scholar Lisa Block de Behar on Monday through Wednesday in a series of events that address major Latin American literary figures and interpretive practices.

The visit by Block de Behar, professor of semiotics and theory of interpretation in the Department of Communication Sciences at the Universidad de la Republica in Uruguay, is part of IREWG's Distinguished Speaker's Series.

Block de Behar is an internationally distinguished writer, theorist and scholar, particularly of the works of Borges, the Argentine poet, essayist and short-story writer whose tales of fantasy and dream worlds are classics of 20th-century world literature.

"It is no exaggeration to say that Lisa Block de Behar's status in Latin America, as well as internationally, as a scholar of literature, but specifically of the work of Borges, is virtually unparalleled," said Rosemary Feal, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.

"Her many books and articles are the work of a profound thinker who, while certainly 'reading Borges,' also is constantly at work on what might be called a poetics of reading, a philosophy of sense-making based on the works of that author who, more than any other, blurred all facile boundaries between literature and thought."

Translations of Block de Behar's work, which include "Una retórica del silencio," (A Rhetoric of Silence), "Al margen de Borges," "Dos medios entre dos medios: Sobre la representación y sus dualidades," and "Una palabra propiamente dicha," exist in English, French and Italian.

Her most recent book, "Borges: The Passion of an Endless Quotation," translated by William Egginton, is forthcoming from SUNY Press.

Block de Behar's visit to UB is co-sponsored by Dennis Tedlock, James McNulty Chair, in the Department of English, and Jorge J.E. Gracia, Samuel P. Capen Chair in the Department of Philosophy.

All events will take place in 930 Clemens Hall, North Campus. They are free and open to the public.

At 1 p.m. Monday, Block de Behar will present a seminar in Spanish on José Enrique Rodó titled "Las visiones críticas de José Enrique Rodó: 'Soñar y mirarse soñar'"

Rodó (1872-1917) was an Uruguayan essayist, literary critic, philosopher and author of the 1900 text "Ariel," which has had a profound impact on an entire generation of Latin Americans. This reinterpretation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" as a political and philosophical basis for Latin Americanism continues to be regarded as a signal and lasting accomplishment.

The seminar, however, will address Rodó's less frequently discussed works on a theory of criticism, a philosophical method that did not become prevalent in Latin America until the last decades of the 20th century.

Block de Behar will meet informally with students and faculty over coffee at 10 a.m. Tuesday. At 2 p.m. that day, she will present a lecture in English titled "Borges and the Endless Quotation," in which she will explore the trope of quotation in the work of Borges as a framework for a profound examination of the notions of originality, intentionality and the nature of meaning itself.

A reception will follow the lecture.

A faculty-student workshop at 10 a.m. Wednesday will address "The Rhetoric of Preterition." Traditionally, "preterition"—a synonym for pretermission—refers to the Calvinist doctrine that holds that God elects a few for salvation and passes over the rest of mankind. In Block de Behar's work, the notion of a word that says and simultaneously negates what is being said informs the rhetoric of preterition, perhaps the fundamental concept of her theory of meaning.

Updates on the events and the readings themselves can be found on the IREWG Web site at www.womenandgender.buffalo.edu/calendar.html. For further information, call 645-2191.