Dear editors,

In the days since reading Vivian Li’s “When Opinion Obscures Art” in Viewpoints, I’ve wondered if the act of publishing this letter was a ploy on the Maroon’s part. Perhaps spotlighting a poorly argued critique of a course that contained undergrads deeply concerned with literature and writing for publication—a piece of writing that disparages not only our inclinations as students but a fantastic professor and the work of Jorge Luis Borges himself—could revive the time-honored tradition of spirited exchanges of letters.

Well, I’ll bite. I signed up for The Simultaneity of Time: Reading Jorge Luis Borges in the 21st Century as a requirement for the Fundamentals major. I’d read Labyrinths in autumn quarter and was captivated by Borges’s stories but felt far from the point of truly grasping them due to the density of Borges’s references to literary, philosophical, and religious texts throughout world history—references often presented in their original languages without translation or explanation. The course offered a chance to spend time with the stories, to provide context and understand what was happening in them.

I agree with Vivian’s surface-level claim that to “impos[e] pre-determined political frameworks” onto a literary text, to evaluate a work of art purely on its political goals, is wrongheaded and limiting. But that’s not what happened in our class, which Vivian would know if she had actually been a part of discussions throughout the quarter; in a class of fewer than 30 students, I’ll note that I have no memory of Vivian’s face or name. Yes, some of the readings assigned for the first few weeks of class directly concerned Borges’s biography. Professor Tenorio is a historian; the course was cross-listed in history and Latin American and Caribbean studies in addition to serving as a Gateway course for Fundamentals.

The choice of history as the lens of inquiry to address Borges’s short writings was not an arbitrary one. Borges writes extensively about the struggle of man to escape history. His characters are often condemned for their unchosen qualities, so to escape history entirely is both impossible and undesirable. The protagonist of “Funes the Memorious,” who sees each moment as occurring simultaneously, cannot meaningfully experience his life and is tethered to humanity only by the Argentine markings of the elaborate numbering system he invents. The intertextuality of Borges’s writing, his engagement with authors and texts beyond that of his life circumstance, shaped the conditions of his writing itself. We cannot write or make art in a way that is entirely divorced from the accidental particularities of our time, place, and condition of birth. To obscure the dimensions of that struggle would be to flatten literature to mere technical craft, losing that which is most human within it.

I’d like to pose a question to Vivian: How would you understand an engagement with the text that does not involve “dissect[ion], debate, or critique”? There is no way to “fully engage with the text as it is, on its own terms” prior to any such exegesis. Every interpretation is a retooling. If the significance of the words in Borges’s stories were exactly equivalent to the words on the page, we as students in the 21st century could only be like Pierre Menard, recreators of Don Quixote, repeating only that sequence of words which is contained within the text itself. If a text is to “challenge” and “inspire” us, we must look further. To disparage our lively discussions as “tangents” belies an inability to think beyond the texts themselves, to do the work that keeps the ideas moving within literature alive and responding throughout the past and future.

The format of an op-ed is a curious one; I suspect that many of my classmates, particularly those in Fundamentals, would feel uneasy fighting back or making some claim to textual authority or ultimate narrative truth that involves a disavowal of one’s vantage point. In a program structured around loyalty to the text, aspiring scholars face a formidable task. To even make an argument, to impose a kind of narrative, is to simplify and to therefore betray. In trying to read thought beyond its circumstances, to perform an act of generosity, we are trying to write our way into heaven from hell.

In both Fundamentals and history, our primary goal as scholars is not to evaluate. We are attempting to understand. To judge before attempting to know is prejudice; I would hope that Vivian never reviews a work of literature if she is to insist on remaining entirely ignorant of the contents of the thing itself in service of some shallow point about the death of truly intellectual discussion on the American college campus. A Fundamentals course at the University of Chicago is potentially one of the worst places to begin such an argument.

Josie Barboriak is a third-year in the College.