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Deconstruction Texts - Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" (1941)

The Universe is a Library in this wild ride of a text. And from that one-line summary, we bet you can tell that Borges's story is a deconstructionist's dream come true. Here, again, there really is no outside-text. It's all text. We're all text.

Okay, now it's your turn:

  1. How does the form of Borges's text (including its use of footnotes) relate to the message that it conveys?
  2. What's deconstructive about "The Library of Babel" (aside from the whole "no outside-text" idea)?