Welcome to Variaciones Borges

Links to

Variaciones Borges is a journal of philosophy, semiotics and literature, published twice a year in Spanish, English and French by The University of Pittsburgh. Reaching beyond pure exegeses of Borges's writings, the journal aims to explore the special style of thinking, writing and reading in which Borges excelled. Fantastic ontologies, synchronic genealogies, utopian grammars, fictional geographies, multiple universal histories, logical bestiaries, ornithological syllogisms, narrative ethics, imaginary mathematics, theological thrillers, nostalgic geometries and invented remembrances converge to justify the epithet "borgesian" for a special area of academic research, in which philosophy appears as perplexity, thought as conjecture, and poetry as the deepest form of rationality. These creative displacements of relevance can be called "transverse epistemologies." Selected articles from past issues of the journal are now available at the end of the section Borges Studies Online.

"Variaciones Borges": the syntactic insolence of the apposition gives a musical connotation to the title of this journal. Like in Bach's "Goldberg Variations" or in Beethoven's "Diabelli", the proper noun -functioning as a metonymy of a textual fragment- is always present as the "aria", as base theme, as material starting point, sometimes free, sometimes "ostinato" of a movement of regulated transgression, of creative fidelity or, as Malraux said, of "coherent deformation". In some cases, it deals about transplanting a form into another material; in other, about developing basic harmonics; in other, about adding a new voice to an existent harmony, and in other, like in the case of jazz variations, it consists in giving some "swing" to the matter itself. "Varier -the musicologist P.-P. Lacas says-, c'est imiter sur la voie d'un discord heureux, c'est transgresser sur le chemin habité par le sujet, c'est dévier sans jamais perdre le sens".

Such is the project of the journal. Borges, of course, but Borges as "theme" of infinite variations. Among these varia-tions, the historical Borges, not as "founding father" but as literary variant. Variaciones Borges is not exclusively devoted to the exegesis of Borges' writings, but to any kind of research applied to his special style of thinking and writing, which goes beyond his own person.

Borges excelled through a particular style of thinking and writing which combines, and sometimes wisely jams, usually incompatible genres. A deep philosopher of poetry and poet of philosophy, Borges presents each of his writings as an ontological riddle. And reciprocally, a borgesian story or poem often assumes the patterns of a treatise. Fantastic ontologies, transversal etymologies, synchronic genealogies, utopian grammars, fictional geographies, multiple universal histories, logical bestiaries, ornithological syllogisms, narrative ethics, imaginary mathematics, theological thrillers, nostalgic geometries and invented remembrances, are part of the huge landscape Borges' works offer both to the academic scholar and the casual reader. And over all things, the philosophy, conceived as perplexity, the thought as conjecture, and the poetry as the deepest form of rationality.

This Borges' style of intellectual behaviour which, although marginally, has been present throughout the history of thinking can be defined as a development of "transversal epistemologies". It is not to be taken for a pure interdisciplinarity, because what is here is less a confluence of methodologies than the epistemological displacement from one area of relevance to another (something as an "hypalagical" scientific attitude...).

Hence, Variaciones Borges defines itself, first of all, as a journal of philosophy, semiotics and comparative literature.

Editorial Board

Editor: Daniel Balderston (University of Pittsburgh)

Associate Editor: Alfredo Alonso Estenoz (Luther College)

Advisors and Founding Editors: Ivan Almeida and Cristina Parodi

Editorial Board:

Edna Aizenberg (Marymount Manhattan College)
Lisa Block de Behar (Universidad de la República, Montevideo)
Silvia Dapía (Purdue University North Central)
Evelyn Fishburn (University of London)
Mark Frisch (Duquesne University)
Brian Gollnick (University of Iowa)
Noé Jitrik (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Michel Lafon (Université de Grenoble)
Nicolás Lucero (University of Georgia)
Sylvia Molloy (University of New York)
Rafael Olea Franco (Colegio de México)
Julio Premat (Université de Paris-VIII)
Beatriz Sarlo (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Saúl Sosnowski (University of Maryland)
Peter Standish (University of East Carolina)

Manuscripts

The Editors will be glad to examine unpublished manuscripts in Spanish, English and French including academic research related to Borges and book reviews on recent relevant scholarship.

Contributions submitted for publication may be sent either in electronic form or in printed form accompanied by an electronic file in Microsoft Word. Bibliographical notes must conform to MLA guidelines.
[Read the style guidelines]

Subscription Rates

Subscriptions for 2008 to Variaciones Borges cost $55/year for individuals and $80/year for institutions. Single issues can be ordered for $40 each. Full sets of back issues (1-26) are available for $1040 (institutions) or $700 (discounted price for individuals). To subscribe with a credit card, please use our simple online subscription process. To subscribe by check, please send a check (on a US bank) made out to "The University of Pittsburgh" to The Borges Center, 1309 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260, USA.

Address

The University of Pittsburgh
Borges Center
1309 Cathedral of Learning
Pittsburgh, PA   15260 USA

tel:  412-624-1206
email:  borges@pitt.edu
web:  www.borges.pitt.edu