SOURCE: “Laughter and the Radical Utopia: The Orient of Borges,” in Orientalism in the Hispanic Literary Tradition, The University of New Mexico Press, 1991, pp. 19-42.

In the following essay, Kushigian explores the significance of “Orientalism” in Borges's fiction.

The Orient, presented ironically, with familiarity, and at times inverted and parodied, is a metaphor in Borges's works for infinite time, fantasy, and utopia. This practice in itself does not differ drastically from other representations of Hispanic Orientalism. What distinguishes Borges in his creativity is the polyglot nature of his representations through which the language of utopia (the Orient) is in dialogue with the language of Western reality. The purpose of dialogue is to go beyond limits of time and space to attract the reader into yet one more labyrinth, or to see the reader's image of the Orient reflected again in the infinitely shifting mirrors, or to examine metaphysically...