To write, or not to write, that is the question: Borges and The Violation of the Other

            To write “the Other” is to enslave them as an Other. The refusal of Murdock to write about his experience can be equated as a refusal to “violate” the Other. But, as Derrida would describe it, “The mere presence of an spectator, then, is a violation.” If we follow Derrida’s logic here, then Murdoch’s return is propelled by a sense of guilt rather than an ethical action. Avelar asks ‘what if "respect" for "other traditions and commitments" requires renouncing the project of a global dialogue in the terms in which it has been posed?’ (Avelar 89).  Is this is what happens in El etnografo? The anthropologist respects the natives resistance to written speech so he opts not to write about them as that would constitute a violation, a rape so to speak, of their culture and thus not ethical in the least? Or, as Derrida would have it, is his silence not out of respect but out of shame, the violation has already been committed just by merely looking?

            Early in the text, Borges hints at the reasons why Murdock pursues his research of the natives: “Uno de sus mayores había muerto en las guerras de la frontera; esa antigua discordia de sus extirpes eran vínculo ahora.” (Borges 59) He seeks to reconcile the border, the orilla, which his ancestors where fighting over. His anthropological intrusion is a way to, so to speak, bring them together, reconcile the difference. Derrida writes: “writing as the possibility of the road and of difference, the history of writing and the history of the road, of the rupture, of la via rupta, of the path that is beaten, broken, fracta, of the space of reversibility and of repetition traced by the opening, the divergent from, and the violent spacing, of nature, of the natural, savage, salvage, forest.” (Derrida 107-108) Hence, writing becomes a way of reaching the Other, of reigning them into the side of the Us, of creating a pathway to them so we can perhaps invade them, civilize them, write them. If Murdoch were to write his experience down, he would be violating that threshold, that orilla, and thus performing, in Derrida’s terms, an act of violence.

            Borges, in my opinion, revels in the presence of such a border. He cherishes its ambivalence and does not choose, much like Murdock: “Cautivo de su propio secreto, Murdock no pertenece ya a ninguna parte, y Borges lo relega al no-lugar de la biblioteca, espacio intermedio donde las interrelaciones culturales y las tensiones ideologicas existen solo en estado de suspension.” (Morana 119) This is key to illuminate where Borges stands in all this. He refuses to take a side, the colonized subjugation or the bourgeois superiority. Borges is only concerned with la Orilla, the border between the two. That’s why he hides in the library, in a space of silent self-knowledge, a place both private and open with written pathways to the world. Maybe he's implying that the Other should speak for themselves (whenever, if ever, they choose to) and that it is impossible to express them in writing, in translation. It is impossible to become the Other, so that's why Murdock resists the task of writing about the other. The secret belongs to them. And it is not for Murdock, or Borges, to write about.