Welcome to Variaciones Borges

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Variaciones Borges is a journal of philosophy, semiotics and literature, published twice a year in Spanish, English and French by The University of Iowa. 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."

"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 Iowa)

Associate Editors: Alfredo Alonso Estenoz (Luther College) and Brian Gollnick (Univeristy of Iowa)

Advisors and Founding Editors: Ivan Almeida and Cristina Parodi

Editorial Board:

Edna Aizenberg (Marymount Manhattan College)
Lisa Block de Behar (Universidad de Montevideo)
Silvia Dapía (Purdue University North Central)
Umberto Eco (Università degli Studi di Bologna)
Evelyn Fishburn (University of London)
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)
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 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 (1-20) are available for $800 (institutions) or $500 (discounted price for individuals). To subscribe with a credit card, go to the following website: http://www.book.uiowa.edu/, then click on "Variaciones Borges." To subscribe with a check on a US bank, please make the check out to "The University of Iowa" and send it to the following address:
IMU Bookstore (attn. Douglas Ward), 63 Iowa Memorial Union, The University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242 USA.

Address

Borges Center
303 Phillips Hall
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA, USA   52242

tel:  319-335-3808
email:  borges-center@uiowa.edu
web:  http://www.uiowa.edu/borges/