The Decompression of Meta - Borges in ” Borges and I ”

I nspired by the strategic operation of mental spacing and conceptual blending in semantics engineered by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, it will be the intention of this piece to subject a slightly modified extension of this operation in the effort to resolve the rather problematic issue of the “I” in Borges’ Borges and I. By selecting this rather succinct and enigmatic text of this stripe with its elements of contradiction that play freely upon its multi-faceted surface, we may perhaps discover a textual situation that displays a more profound conceptual richness in this particular story. Although we are here inspired by the critical work of the mental spacing and conceptual blending project, we hereby retain the spirit of said project without becoming too absorbed in honouring the strict letter of its program. Moreover, this piece will implicitly demonstrate two items peculiar to the selection of this text and the spirit of the program: 1. As an anomalous text wherein the subject of the “I” is loose and creative, we may come to recognize a new direction for the conceptual blending technique that does not doom the entire theory to defeasibility, and 2. To map out, using elements of the blending technique, the theoretical apparatus of the “I” in Borges’ rather clever and playful attitude toward conventional language use