A postmodern reading of Borges: Judas Iscariot as Otherness of God

Abstract

The article explores possible postmodernfeatures in the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges, which has always been linked by reading-writing relation. Having
in mind that the Borgesian way of reading is an act of innovation and subversive critique inscribed inside the text, we will observe how Borges discovers the possible values hidden between different layers of the text and reality. Furthermore, we will illustrate postmodern characteristics of his story through constant inversion and reversion of the meaning of the (in)famous Christian story that created the symbol of treason – the story of Judas Iscariot. Following traces of the Gnostic opus written by his focalizer Nils Runeberg, Borges succeeds in equalizing the theologically opposed biblical couple - God and Judas - by using paradox, inversion and chiasmus. Borges makes one step further by presenting Judas as the Other, or the Same, of God, thus related to the postmodern philosophy of Otherness. Therefore, Borges manages to uncover the mechanisms producing human knowledge and deconstructs historic and religious structures as mere constructs. In this way, his readership begins to question the origins of knowledge, which seems to be a field of both fantastic and postmodern literature.