I began my previous response paper with a critical question of wonder and perplexity, “What are the labyrinths in the Borges story and what fantasy themes/issues do they illustrate?” I have explored its interwoven meanings through the text, myself and the world. I have also paused to reflect and, therefore, connect with my personal experience. However, I have not rendered the critical importance of Nature and natural as one of the recurring and meandering themes in Borges’s story and in my personal reflections. To me, this analytic essay is a contextual exploration of three course themes: 1) Nature and “natural”; 2) gender/class/race/power dynamic and social structure; and 3) garden as a social/political fantasy. I ground my analysis in
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Therefore, I argue that the garden of forking paths is an embodiment of the dominant and alternative fantasies of Nature and “natural” that conceal and reveal the social structure and its gender/class/race/power …show more content…
To me, this means that the garden embodies a nostalgic (Lippard) sense of place, where Tsun and his ancestor sought a refuge from a naturalized (i.e., “natural”) meaning of their lives with its power-laden social structures of gendered racism/classism/nationalism. For example, Lippard calls nostalgia “a way of denying the present,” where the past is “not as separate from the present as its manipulators would like us to think.” It is crucial to know one’s history “so that we are not defined by others, so that we can resist other people’s images of our pasts, and consequently our futures” (Lippard). In the garden, they could find their different futures and pasts with all their self-determined choices and possibilities of being and becoming. Therefore, the garden embodies Nature in its infinite, intimate now of their past, present and future. In this moment of now, they didn’t have to follow the dominant choices that had been made for them by others. Hence, they didn’t have to participate in the future that they hadn’t chosen for themselves. In fact, they didn’t even have to make choices at all. They could be the “abstract perceivers” (Borges 44) of the unfolding reality of the world. In this place of Nature, they could live forever. Dr. Tsun didn’t have to commit the murder in order to battle
Therefore, I argue that the garden of forking paths is an embodiment of the dominant and alternative fantasies of Nature and “natural” that conceal and reveal the social structure and its gender/class/race/power …show more content…
To me, this means that the garden embodies a nostalgic (Lippard) sense of place, where Tsun and his ancestor sought a refuge from a naturalized (i.e., “natural”) meaning of their lives with its power-laden social structures of gendered racism/classism/nationalism. For example, Lippard calls nostalgia “a way of denying the present,” where the past is “not as separate from the present as its manipulators would like us to think.” It is crucial to know one’s history “so that we are not defined by others, so that we can resist other people’s images of our pasts, and consequently our futures” (Lippard). In the garden, they could find their different futures and pasts with all their self-determined choices and possibilities of being and becoming. Therefore, the garden embodies Nature in its infinite, intimate now of their past, present and future. In this moment of now, they didn’t have to follow the dominant choices that had been made for them by others. Hence, they didn’t have to participate in the future that they hadn’t chosen for themselves. In fact, they didn’t even have to make choices at all. They could be the “abstract perceivers” (Borges 44) of the unfolding reality of the world. In this place of Nature, they could live forever. Dr. Tsun didn’t have to commit the murder in order to battle