For my final project, I wanted to circle back to the beginning of this course and re-explore Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, “The Library of Babel.” Within this short story, Borges explores the complex power dynamics that surround books and the readers/owners of them. One of his main focal points is an indescribable index that contains the entire library within it and is thought to be the cipher of everything else. Many librarians dedicate their lives trying to find this book and in their search shifted the politics and ways of living in the library. This devotion results in fanaticism and new religions in the library. With my project, I want to explore how books and knowledge have become symbols of power and privilege. Many people have spent their lives searching for more knowledge and they will go to extreme lengths to obtain this knowledge. I also want to focus on the librarians/gatekeepers of the books and content and how they determine what to keep in the archives as a way of wielding power. I am still trying to hone in my thesis so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
For the creative aspect of the project, I am going to make a physical representation of the Book and make the intangible tangible. I will achieve this by using inspiration and techniques from the artists books we have looked at in Special Collections. I am planning on doing a concertina- style book that emulate the vastness of the library when you look through it. This piece is to represent the lengths one would go in order to seek out more knowledge.
I love this idea and the creative aspect of it in particular. I would like to see you narrow in on what specifically, in and about, Borges’s story you plan to analyze: is it the index, the book, or the fanaticism? Is it the concept of gatekeeping or something else? In other words, there’s a lot of ideas here, but I would like to see you focus in a bit more so that you are doing an analysis of the story as a way of thinking about the importance of book history, libraries, etc.. That focus might come from doing research into scholarship and literary criticism about the story. You might be interested in doing a deep dive into how people have read the short story and thought about it in terms of book history. Or, you might consider rereading the story in relation to Marino’s homage to it.,… either way, you need to refine your focus on the story.
Start with the Project Muse database via the SDSU library, and search for literary criticism about Borges’ story; I think that might help!