Mariano Siskind on "The Novel After the End of the Novel: Borges' Non-Novels and the Practice of Not-Writing"

NOVEL THEORY

SPEAKER: Mariano Siskind, Harvard University

Notably, Jorge Luis Borges never wrote a novel, but he crafted the plots of the novels he decided not to write. This presentation will consider Borges' decision to 'not-write' novels, alongside the 'non-novels' he imagined in his fiction in the context of his understanding of literature as a readerly event, and of his awareness of the historical crisis of the novel-form.

About the Speaker

Mariano Siskind is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of Cosmopolitan Desires. Global Modernity and World Literature in Latin America, Rumo a um cosmopolitismo da perda. Ensaio sobre o fim do mundo, and The Modernist Songbook. Standards y variaciones sobre formas muertas. He has edited Homi Bhabha's Nuevas minorías, nuevos derechos, and has co-edited with Sylvia Molloy Poéticas de la distancia. Adentro y afuera de la literatura argentina (2006); with Gesine Müller, World Literature, Cosmopolitanism, Globality: Beyond, Against, Post, Otherwise; and with Guillermina De Ferrari, The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latin American Literature and Culture. In 2025 he will publish the collection of essays, Dislocaciones y fin de eso que ya no es mundo, and is working on a new book, tentatively titled About the End of the World: The Demise of Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary Culture.

If you have any questions, please contact Deidre Lynch at deidrelynch@fas.harvard.edu or Yoon Sun Lee at ylee@wellesley.edu.