Games of Inheritance: Kabbalah, Tradition, and Authorship in Jorge Luis Borges

by Yitzhak Lewis

Overview

Games of Inheritance explores the thought of Argentine author and public intellectual Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) on questions of authorship and literary tradition. The book focuses on Borges’s engagement with Jewish literary and intellectual traditions, highlighting the role of this engagement in developing and expressing his views on these questions. The book argues that the primary relevance of Borges’s persistent reference to “the Judaic” is not for understanding his attitude toward Jews and Judaism but for understanding his position in contemporary Argentinian debates about nationalism and literature, empire and postcolonialism, and populism and aesthetics. By broadening the frame of Borges and the Judaic, this book shifts the scholarly focus to the poetic utility of Borges’s engagement with Jewish literary and intellectual traditions. This allows a better understanding of the nuance of his views on the issues that most animate his oeuvre: authorship and writing, literature and tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978843974
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	05/13/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	236
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

YITZHAK LEWIS is an assistant professor of humanities at Duke Kunshan University, China. He is the author of A Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

• Introduction: A Game of Inheritance 
  • The Judaic
  • From Kabbalah to Tradition (the Structure of the Argument)
  • Methodological Notes

Section I: Kabbalah

• Chapter 1: Kabbalistic Stories
  • Kabbalistic Methodologies
  • Encountering Scholem
• Chapter 2: The Ideal Author
  • A Vindication of the Author
  • What is an Author?
  • Another Creation Story
  • Cabal and Complot
  • A Comment on Literature and Conspiracy
• Chapter 3: The Ideal Reader
  • Borges’ Parable of the Cave
  • The Narrator and the Kabbalist
  • Kabbalah and Tradition

Section II: Tradition

• Chapter 4: The Trouble with Tradition
  • Literary Tradition
  • Jewish Tradition
  • National Tradition
  • Tradition in the Historical Sense
  • The Postwar Question of Tradition
• Chapter 5: What is Jewish Tradition?
  • First Rejection: The Essential
  • Second Rejection: The Original
  • Third Rejection: The Rupture
  • The Departure from Tradition
  • Veblen, An Imbalanced Analogy
  • Veblen, An Evolving Analogy
• Chapter 6: Tradition and Local Color
  • Between Jewish and Israeli Literature
  • “The Memory of Israel is in Agnon”
  • Between Tradition and Local Color
  • Bring on the Camels

Section III: Authorship

• Chapter 7: Authorship and its Metaphors
  • Hasidism
  • The Sphere of In-Between
  • Kafka and his Precursors
  • A New Metaphor for Authorship
• Conclusion: Borges and his Kafkaesque Precursors

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Acknowledgments
ix
Introduction: A Game of Inheritance 1
The Judaic 4
From Kabbalah to Tradition (the Structure of the Argument) 7
Methodological Notes 10
Part I Kabbalah
1 Kabbalistic Stories 15
Kabbalistic Methodologies 17
Encountering Scholem 22
2 The Ideal Author 29
A Vindication of the Author 31
What is an Author? 33
Another Creation Story 37
Cabal and Complot 39
A Comment on Literature
and Conspiracy 42
3 The Ideal Reader 51
Borges’s Parable of the Cave 54
The Narrator and the Kabbalist 59
Kabbalah and Tradition 68
Part II Tradition
4 The Trouble
with Tradition 73
Literary Tradition 75
Jewish Tradition 78
National Tradition 79
Tradition in the Historical Sense 82
The Postwar Question of Tradition 87
5 What Is Jewish Tradition? 91
First Rejection: The Essential 93
Second Rejection: The Original 95
Third Rejection: The Rupture 96
The Departure from Tradition 98
Veblen, an Imbalanced Analogy 104
Veblen, an Evolving Analogy 108
6 Tradition and Local Color 113
Between Jewish and Israeli Literature
115
“The Memory of Israel Is in Agnon” 118
Between Tradition and Local Color 123
Bring on the Camels 126
Part III Authorship
7 Authorship and Its Metaphors
135
Hasidism 138
The Sphere of In-Between
142
Kafka and His Precursors 144
A New Metaphor
for Authorship 148
Conclusion: Borges and His Kafkaesque Precursors 155
A Sidenote on Another Precursor 157
Jewish Literature
after
Borges 158
Notes 161
Bibliography 195
Index
 

Editorial Reviews

"Games of Inheritance dares scholars to shift their thinking from questions of accuracy and influence in Borges's engagement with the Jewish textual tradition and focus instead on Borges's imagined invention of 'the Judaic.' Lewis's speculative and novel claim will inspire scholars both inside and outside Jewish studies, Latin American studies, and comparative literature to move beyond biography in order to rethink Borges under the sign of a modern 'kabbalistic prophet.'"

author of Kabbalah and Literature - Kitty Millet

"Lewis' study of what he calls the Judaic 'web of allusions' in Jorge Luis Borges' writing opens new interpretative possibilities implied in the positing of a marrano gesture at the dead center of twentieth-century Latin American literature. Lewis' endeavor engages with a Borgesian literary politics on the other side of national allegories or any kind of identity postulation.  Borgesian dissidence establishes a horizon of and for literature that still today remains unthought in the Latin American and Spanish archive."

author of Uncanny Rest: For Antiphilosophy - Alberto Moreiras