4.0284 Queries: Borges; Australian Email Problems (2/53)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 16 Jul 90 18:26:18 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0284. Monday, 16 Jul 1990.


(1) Date: Sat, 14 Jul 90 18:15 EST (41 lines)
From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: Can anyone locate this passage from Borges?

(2) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 16:57:18 -0400 (12 lines)
From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield)
Subject: "Australian e-mail problems?"

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 90 18:15 EST
From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: Can anyone locate this passage from Borges?

Recently, while browsing through the Lexis library of law review
articles, I discovered an article by Jay M. Feinman entitled "The
Jurisprudence of Classification," 41 Stan. L. Rev. 661, 662 (1989),
which quotes the following passage from M. Foucault, The Order of Things
xv (A. Sheridan trans. 1970), which in turn--as you will note--quotes
from Borges. I have seen this reference to Foucault several times, but
have not been able to discover where the passage appears in the writings
of Borges himself. I have posted this query before, but I am still
looking.

Can anyone tell me where the quoted passage appears in Borges's writings?

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of
the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the
familiar landmarks of my thought -- our thought, the thought
that bears the stamp of our age and our geography -- breaking up
all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are
accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and
continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse
our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This
passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopedia' in which it is
written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the
Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens,
(f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present
classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a
very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken
the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like
flies.' In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we
apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the
fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of
thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility
of thinking that.

Thank you.

Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, Ohio

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------26----
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 16:57:18 -0400
From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield)
Subject: "Australian e-mail problems?"

Could anyone tell me if users at 'wacsvax' are being deprived of INTERNET
or BITNET mail due to mailer failure or other reasons? My connections
to wacsvax.cs.uwa.oz.au have been refused for the past few days.

Thanks,
Joel D. Goldfield
Language Outreach, Dartmouth College
jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu