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LITERATURES OF THE AMERICAS
Borges and
Black Mirror
David Laraway
Literatures of the Americas
Series Editor
Norma E. Cantú
Trinity University
San Antonio, TX, USA
This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within
a hemispheric perspective, with an emphasis on perspectives from Latin
America. Books in the series highlight work that explores concerns in
literature in different cultural contexts across historical and geographical
boundaries and also include work on the specific Latina/o realities in the
United States. Designed to explore key questions confronting contem-
porary issues of literary and cultural import, Literatures of the Americas
is rooted in traditional approaches to literary criticism but seeks to in-
clude cutting-edge scholarship using theories from postcolonial, critical
race, and ecofeminist approaches.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14819
David Laraway
Borges and Black

Mirror
David Laraway
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT, USA
Literatures of the Americas

ISBN 978-3-030-44237-8 ISBN 978-3-030-44238-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44238-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Covre illustration: © Melisa Hasan
This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Possessed by the Mirror 1
2 Forgetting and Forgiving in an Age of Total Recall 21
3 Nostalgia, the Virtual, and the Artifice of Eternity 49
4 Executable Code 77
Works Cited 109
Index 117
v
About the Author
David Laraway received a Ph.D. in Romance Studies from Cornell Uni-

versity and a Ph.D. in Philosophy, Art, and Social Thought from the Eu-
ropean Graduate School. He is the author of American Idiots: Outsider
Music, Outsider Art, and the Philosophy of Incompetence (2018) and co-
author (with Merlin Forster) of Árbol de imágenes: nueva historia de la
poesía hispanoamericana (2007).
vii
CHAPTER 1
Possessed by the Mirror
Abstract A discussion of Borges’s early tale “The Mirror of Ink” and the
title sequence of Brooker’s Black Mirror series lays the groundwork for
the introduction of some of the key themes to be addressed in the volume.
These include the materiality of forms of written and visual media, the
nature of self-awareness as it takes shape in the works of both authors,
and the concept of remediation as an interpretive strategy for bringing
Borges and Brooker into dialogue. Some attention is also given to the
challenges posed by “anachronistic” approaches to reading Borges as well
as the danger of failing to attend to the ways that the vision of Black
Mirror is grounded not just in recent technological developments but in
the broader literary and philosophical tradition.
Keywords Media · Materiality · Borges · Brooker
Borges’s IPad
In one of his earliest narratives, “The Mirror of Ink” [“El espejo de
tinta”], Borges tells a story he attributes to nineteenth-century British
adventurer Richard Francis Burton, who claimed to have heard it from the
Sudanese warlock Abderramen al-Masmudı̄ (CF 60–62/OC 1.341–43).1
Al-Masmudı̄, whose brother had been put to death by Sudan’s capri-
cious and cruel governor, Yaqub the Afflicted, had been taken captive but
© The Author(s) 2020 1

D. Laraway, Borges and Black Mirror, Literatures of the Americas,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44238-5_1
2 D. LARAWAY
managed, through his divinatory talents, to ingratiate himself with the

tyrant. The two came to participate regularly in a ritual which, the nar-
rator tells us, was always the same: al-Masmudı̄ would pour ink into the
cupped hand of Yaqub and burn incense that had been carefully prepared
from coriander seed, benzoin resin, and Quranic invocations written upon
strips of parchment. Yaqub would declare to al-Masmudı̄ the subject of
the vision that he desired to see and then gaze into the pool of ink he held
in his palm. Wild horses, exotic kingdoms, angels, prophetic visions of the
cities of the future: all were magically revealed to Yaqub’s eager gaze as he
peered into the ink. At first the images were static but, with practice, al-
Masmudı̄ learned to animate them according to his host’s desires. As the
visions became increasingly elaborate, an enigmatic veiled figure began to
appear time and again in these vignettes, which increasingly took on a
violent cast.
The narrator tells of one particular occasion when the governor, in a
fit of bloodlust, demands to be shown some scene in which justice would
be unsparingly meted out. The sorcerer conjures up for him an animated
diorama featuring Yaqub’s own royal executioner. Yaqub notices that the
victim is slated to be that same veiled figure who had appeared in earlier
scenes. Just before the stranger is to be executed, Yaqub demands that
al-Masmudı̄ remove the mask. The sorcerer initially resists, fearing that
to reveal the figure’s identity would unleash some kind of terrible divine
retribution. Dismissing al-Masmudı̄’s fears, Yaqub persists. The sorcerer
finally acquiesces and the victim turns out to be, perhaps unsurprisingly,
Yaqub himself. Trembling at the realization that he has unwittingly con-
jured up a representation of his own demise, the despot watches in horror
as the final preparations are made for his execution. “He was possessed
by the mirror” [“estaba poseído por el espejo”], the narrator tells us, and
“he did not even try to turn his eyes aside, or to spill out the ink” [“ni
siquiera trató de alzar los ojos o de volcar la tinta”] (CF 62/OC 1.342).
It is as if Yaqub’s knowledge of what was to transpire were insufficient
to counter the desires that had been unleashed by the vision in the black
mirror. As the sword falls upon the neck of the victim in the mirror of
ink, Yaqub too groans and falls to the ground, dead.
“The Mirror of Ink” is one of Borges’s lesser-known stories and has
never received a great deal of attention from critics. Perhaps its conclu-
sion may be too obvious for an attentive reader; perhaps it lacks some of
the subtlety and depth of his more mature ficciones.2 But it may also be
that previous generations of readers and critics were not really prepared
1 POSSESSED BY THE MIRROR 3
to read the text in the way that we are now. To read “The Mirror of
Ink” today, two decades into the twenty-first century, is inevitably to find
certain aspects of it disquietingly familiar. Consider that our protagonist
holds in his hand a miniature screen which, enlivened by technologies he
does not presume to understand, displays animated scenes he feels com-
pulsively drawn to consume. He cannot help but watch until that crucial
moment when the representation of the desires he had wished to enjoy
in fact ends up devouring him instead. The device turns out to be not
just a screen but also a mirror, one that endows him with a species of
self-knowledge that he cannot finally abide. Now, replace the pool of ink
with an iPad; the resin and coriander seed mixture with the software that
provides streaming content; al-Masmudı̄’s conjured-up scenes with Net-
flix’s on-demand catalogue; and Yaqub’s obsessive consumption of those
images with Netflix subscribers powering their way through their queues.
Suddenly an obscure text composed in the 1930s (which purported to
be just a retelling of an obscure anecdote published in a mostly forgotten
travel narrative from the 1860s) turns into an uncannily prescient tale,
one that goes far beyond the familiar moralizing scolding about the perils
of wasting too much time binge-watching videos on-demand on a phone
or tablet.3 This is vintage Borges, a writer who somehow seems always to
be ahead of us, no matter where we are.
Screening Brooker
I’m simplifying, of course, and we shall have more to say later about the
dangers of casually reading Borges in a naïvely anachronistic way. But for
now let us push on with our contemporary re-imagining of “The Mir-
ror of Ink.” If the story feels fresh and current, perhaps it is because
the protagonist’s situation seems to resonate with our own: we too intuit
that there is a complex relationship between our desires—and even our
identity—and the technologies that have ostensibly been designed to help
us realize them. And as new forms of media evolve apace and we become
more aware of our dependence upon emerging communicative platforms,
the tension between our desires and the technological contours of our
habitus becomes only more complex. The tools that were developed with
an eye toward satisfying those desires end up impeaching some of the
most cherished beliefs we may hold about ourselves. This is the crucial
animating premise of so much speculative fiction today: technology is a
double-edged sword which unleashes the same libidinal forces that it had
4 D. LARAWAY
sought to domesticate. That Borges, the symbol par excellence of a gen-

teel and slightly antiquated bookishness, should have become regarded as
a prophet for our times speaks volumes about the plasticity of his parables.
Of course if we wished to imagine a truly contemporary reworking of
“The Mirror of Ink” that were faithful to its vision while enlarging upon
it, we could do no better than to entrust the script to Charlie Brooker.
Brooker’s Black Mirror series—created in 2011 for Channel 4 in Britain
and acquired by Netflix in 2014—has become a reference point in popu-
lar culture for its provocative exploration of the unanticipated and unad-
vertised costs of technological advances, particularly as these disclose and
amplify the social traits that we already bring to bear when employing
them. Conceptually ambitious, richly intertextual, self-aware: many of the
same descriptions that are traditionally invoked when discussing Borges
also apply to Brooker, who by all accounts has been at the vanguard of
intellectually challenging programming in the post-television era (Long-
den). The anthological nature of Black Mirror, with each episode stand-
ing logically independent of the others, has allowed Brooker to take on
a freewheeling and unfettered approach to a wide range of complex top-
ics, without needing to hew to a single narrative thread across multiple
episodes and seasons.4
In fact, if there is a common denominator that binds together the
otherwise unrelated episodes of Black Mirror, perhaps it is hidden in
plain sight, in the brief clip of ten seconds or so with which each pro-
gram begins. Black Mirror’s stylized opening title sequence manages to
foreground some of the same themes we have already touched upon in
Borges’s “The Mirror of Ink” even as it brings to light a host of new ques-
tions. It is important to keep in mind the distinctive manner in which
most viewers encounter the program: as often as not, they are likely to
view it on a phone or personal electronic device. So, when they first
queued up the first episode of the first season of Black Mirror, many
were probably unsurprised to be greeted by a familiar spinning wheel
in the middle of the screen, an icon that customarily signals that the
selected video is loading. More precocious or attentive viewers might have
noticed, however, that the animated icon rotating against the black back-
drop was not in fact a buffering icon native to their own device but rather
an element embedded in the program’s title sequence. Within seconds,
the spinning ball resolves itself into animated geometric shapes; these, in
turn, resolve into the program’s now familiar “Black Mirror” title card. At
precisely this point the viewer would have noticed a whining mechanical
sound which increases in pitch until it too resolves into the sound of shat-
tering glass. And, as the viewer hears the glass break, a hyper-realistic crack
suddenly shoots across the Black Mirror lettering. The final image of the
brief introductory sequence is visually indistinguishable from a sight that
many of us would find all too familiar: the shattered screen of a personal
electronic device once it has had an unscheduled meeting with a side-
walk or uncarpeted floor, cracks in the glass now spiderwebbing across its
surface.
The sequence is well-executed and almost elegant in its simplicity from
a design standpoint. It also comports perfectly with the sensibilities that
inform every episode of Brooker’s Black Mirror, no matter the specific
themes which particular episodes may touch upon. In a program devoted
to exploring the diverse ways in which new technological developments
oblige us to rethink the nature of our desires and to face difficult ques-
tions about what it means to be human, the title sequence reminds us
that the very medium in which these ideas are to be explored is already
part of the problem to be addressed. And of course one particular corol-
lary is unavoidable: not only is the medium itself compromised, but we
viewers are obliged to address the difficult issues raised by Black Mirror
from within that same framework. The image of the shattered screen in
its transgression of the boundary between spectacle and viewer reminds
us that we can claim no higher ground or privileged position from which
to adjudicate the issues that Black Mirror asks us to examine. We must
address the challenges and opportunities posed to us by new forms of
media from within the parameters established by those forms themselves.
The gesture is appropriate if, in a way, rather unsurprising. Certainly
the introduction of an element of self-awareness would seem to be
unavoidable in a series like Black Mirror. Since the show is in large mea-
sure concerned with the ways in which emerging technologies impinge
upon both our social world and our sense of self, no serious reflection on
these topics would be complete if it did not require us to bear in mind the
self-referential dimensions of the problem. That said, we may be forgiven
for wondering whether the techniques associated with self-referential nar-
rative have by now become so familiar that our current cultural landscape
has not become oversaturated with them, so much so that any media arti-
fact that aspires to intellectual seriousness these days seems obliged to at
least genuflect in that direction. And while it would be far too easy to
overstate the (indirect) role that Borges may have played in constituting
our current intellectual landscape in terms of self-aware narrative, there
6 D. LARAWAY
can be little doubt that his work gave now-familiar metafictional princi-
ples and techniques an air of gravitas at the same time that it made them
available to other writers, artists, and filmmakers who were capable of
reaching a wider audience than he was.
At the very least, it seems safe to say that Brooker’s work comports
with Borges’s, even if it would be too much to claim that it constitutes
a direct modulation of it into a visual key. Just as Yaqub’s scrutiny of
the mirror of ink finally discloses to him his own problematic place on a
Möbius strip in which life and representation finally—and fatally—merge,
the viewer of Brooker’s Black Mirror also finds herself drawn into a feed-
back loop that calls into question her very subjectivity as a viewer. In
either case, the interpretive problem is not a mere abstraction. Rather,
Brooker helps us recall a key point that is easy to miss when we read
Borges, one that has apparently been reified to some extent in the critical
tradition: the nature of the medium of representation is bound up in cru-
cial ways with the moment of the character’s (or, more importantly, the
reader’s or viewer’s) anagnorisis or moment of self-recognition. If Borges
helps to lay the conceptual groundwork for the self-referential dimen-
sions of a contemporary work like Black Mirror, Brooker helps us return
to Borges and (re)discover in his work important clues about the nature
of the mirror in question, in addition to its logical and self-referential
properties.
Media, Materiality, and Mirrors

We might take a first step toward appreciating the nature of the media
forms at issue by recalling a point that Slavoj Žižek is fond of making.
Žižek is skeptical of what he identifies as the quintessentially postmod-
ernist tropes of self-referentiality and the ways in which what may at first
appear to be a subversive gesture may turn out to be anything but that.
To be content with making such an identification, to merely signal one’s
self-awareness with regard to one’s place within a determinate conceptual
or ideological framework, is not only to leave the underlying substruc-
ture of the artifact untouched but actually, in a curious way, to exculpate
oneself and perpetuate or justify the structure that it purports to call into
question. Ours, he holds, is not only a moment of apparently rapturous
technological advances but of new and sophisticated guises for ideology
itself: the postmodernist fascination with self-awareness ultimately serves
to enable the ideological infrastructure to repair itself under the guise of

self-criticism. There is therefore no criticism or dialectical thought wor-
thy of the name in empty gestures of self-awareness that call attention to
one’s ideological commitments only to leave them finally unchecked and
unchallenged (cf. Sublime Object 28–30). Now, the point of the present
study is not to engage in ideological criticism of Borges and Black Mirror
per se, but Žižek’s warning is well taken. For it may turn out that gestures
of self-awareness in and of themselves serve only to occlude other aspects
of the texts that are no less essential to their ultimate meaning.
What do analyses of metanarratives in works such as those by Brooker
and Borges fail to take into account? The answer, like Poe’s letter, may
be hidden in plain sight. Both Borges’s mirror of ink and Brooker’s black
mirror tacitly draw upon an element of materiality as they highlight the
question of the technologies of inscription that each employs in order to
generate meaning.5 The moment of anagnorisis, or self-recognition—the
moment when Taqub recognizes himself in the mirror of ink and the
moment when the viewer realizes that she herself is present in the text or
visual narrative in some unanticipated way—is facilitated by these material
dimensions of the text. Consider again the Black Mirror title sequence. I
have already alluded to the moment in which the buffering icon appears,
luring us into the first trap that has been set, namely, the assumption that
the banal reality of the viewer may be safely compartmentalized from the
story to be represented. But even prior to the appearance of the icon,
a key moment of our spectatorship has already been staged as a func-
tion of the material properties of that same device that allows the story
to be told in the first place. Before the icon appears, the viewer must
have selected the program to be viewed. Generally this is done, on most
personal electronic devices and many desktop computers, when the user
interacts haptically with the glass screen that serves as the display. What
follows is an experience as significant as it is ubiquitous and therefore eas-
ily overlooked: the colorful menu of program choices disappears and the
screen goes totally dark, just prior to the appearance of any new, discrete
visual element. For a brief moment, we find ourselves gazing at our own
reflection in the reflective black surface of the device.6 Our gaze is cap-
tured and our visage is dimly reflected back to us on the screen of the
iPad or computer that is calling up the media we wish to consume.
8 D. LARAWAY
The technology of the iPad thus serves a double function that owes
as much to McLuhan as it does to Lacan. The tablet extends our bod-
ily presence and numbs our consciousness as we reenact within its dis-
play the ancient drama of Narcissus, effectively turning ourselves into
what McLuhan calls the “servomechanisms” of the images we consume
(Understanding Media 47). Entranced by the images thrown back to us
from the black waters of the mediatic reflecting pool, we are reminded of
our libidinal investments in the projects of both self-knowledge and tech-
nology. In fact, the complex relationship between the two may provide us
with an important clue regarding the nature of our own narcissism.7 The
uncanny commingling of face and interface in the iPad is evidence that
the screen in question is not simply an inert object devoid of content; the
black mirror is not just an ordinary glass surface. And yet it is not simply
a metaphor either. McLuhan suggests that our media devices are what he
calls “auto-amputations,” extensions of the body that, by virtue of hav-
ing been externalized, allow us to maintain a sort of internal homeostasis
even as they render the task of self-recognition problematic (cf. 41–47).
Consider the specific manner in which the iPad functions as a bodily
extension of ourselves. The screen of the device serves as a haptic surface
that responds to the physical touch of the user. Apple’s fabrication pro-
cesses include a step in which the glass screen is coated with a capacitive
substance that responds to changes in the electrical field: these variations
are interpreted as inputs which in turn are indexed to a series of proto-
cols (cf. McCann). In this way, the electrical charge of the user’s body is
transmitted to the device, which interprets changes in the electrical field as
inputs. These are capable of triggering the appearance of particular items,
such as an electronic menu. So the apparent emptiness of the darkened
screen itself is deceptive. Even as it reflects our countenance back to us
prior to displaying any streaming content, its black void conceals a hive
of persistent yet invisible activity within the device as the now-activated
electronic circuits—materialized in unseen chips, wire, transponders, and
so on—begin to process the commands that will result in the delivery of
viewable content. In an important sense, the screen to which we direct
our gaze is therefore not just a black mirror but also a dark membrane, a
semi-porous surface that selectively permits the passage of elements from
one side to the other.8
Of course we tend to bear none of this in mind when firing up the
latest episode of Black Mirror. Truth be told, very few of us are aware,
even dimly, of the inner workings of either the hardware or the software
that make our viewing sessions possible. The position we occupy is in this
respect not terribly different from that of Borges’s Yaqub, who was happy
to enjoy the fruits of al-Masmudı̄’s rituals without being unduly preoc-
cupied with the particulars of how the wizard’s “hardware”—i.e., the
ink, Yaqub’s cupped hand—was able to run the “software”—the specific
prayers, spells, and incantations al-Masmudı̄ offered—that correspond to
the specific visions displayed by the black mirror. This is not merely a
question of whether one is “self-aware” in some abstract, wholly con-
ceptual sense: rather, the tension between the material properties of the
story-telling device and the story itself is what animates the problems at
hand. The genius of the opening title sequence of Brooker’s Black Mirror
is that it draws upon the material features of the device in order to stage
our vulnerability to the paradoxes of self-awareness. In this way, the so-
called “metafictional” dimensions of the program—including those that
bear somehow upon the subjectivity of the viewer—turn out to be insep-
arable from the material properties of the medium of the narrative.
It goes without saying that the material elements and the media envi-
ronment of Borges’s “The Mirror of Ink” are quite distinct from those
attached to Brooker’s Black Mirror: the medium of print does not involve
the same kind of complex relationship between the literal hardware plat-
forms and software programs that we associate with digital media. And
yet to (re)read Borges now, in light of Brooker, is perhaps inevitably
to approach him with a certain predisposition to appreciate elements of
his texts that might have otherwise escaped our attention. Consider, for
instance, how some of the distinctive mediatic traits of Black Mirror may
sensitize us to elements of Borges’s “The Mirror of Ink” that were already
latent in the story and might yet have otherwise gone unnoticed.
An astute admirer of Borges at an earlier time might have understood
the tale of Yaqub and al-Masmudı̄’ to be not only an entertaining curios-
ity but a parable about the dangers of reading without at least a minimal
degree of self-awareness. But to re-read Borges after watching Brooker
is, I think, different. Among other things it is to approach him already
attuned to the ways in which the practices of self-aware reading cannot
be exhaustively characterized at the level of cognition alone. As it hap-
pens, I think that there are many other ways of bringing Brooker and
Borges into fruitful dialogue and I shall explore some of them in the
essays that follow. But for now, we can at least acknowledge this possibil-
ity: that Brooker’s Black Mirror, in its broadest contours, reminds us that
our practices of interpreting are somehow connected to the materiality
10 D. LARAWAY
of the medium in which they are embedded. We might say that Brooker
invites us to return to Borges, attuned now to questions that might have
once appeared ephemeral or uninteresting, that is, when they arose at all,
for previous generations of readers of the Argentine master.
So to what, exactly, does Brooker’s title sequence sensitize us as we
return to Borges? For one thing, we are invited to attend more carefully
to the ways in which we as readers find ourselves in a position analogous
to that of Yaqub. The black ink set against the white background in our
print edition of “The Mirror of Ink” is not merely a felicitous metaphor,
a tool with which to pry some allegorical meaning from Borges’s story. As
we have already noted, it is quite literally an embodiment of a particular
technology of inscription (cf. Arellano). As such, it not only refers to the
familiar paradoxes of self-reflexivity but rather it directly embodies them
in an altogether different, wholly material, register. The ink (or perhaps
the black pixels of the screen, if we prefer to read Borges on a tablet or
computer) of which the text is materially constituted possesses proper-
ties that are germane to not only the meaning of the text but, more to
the point, the experience of reading it. These include, to mention only
the most obvious example, the opacity of the characters on the page and
their material capacity both to absorb and to reflect light. While it admit-
tedly would be somewhat odd to claim that a print or electronic edition
of “The Mirror of Ink” reflects the reader’s visage in the same way as the
opening sequence of Black Mirror when viewed on a personal electronic
device, it does seem undeniable that we are asked to bear in mind the
literal reflective properties of ink if we are to appreciate the richness of
Borges’s tale. In principle, if not in practice, we are in the same position
as Yaqub. We too find ourselves gazing down at the constellations of ink
that we hold in our hand. Suddenly we too find our own image mate-
rially present in that same medium that bedeviled Borges’s protagonist,
alongside the representation of events we had presumed merely to enjoy.
And our sudden recognition of our own image in the black ink of the text
that we hold in our hand tells us something sobering about the material
dimensions of our own subjectivity.
Reading Borges with Brooker

I mentioned earlier that I was temporarily bracketing the dangers of read-
ing Borges from an anachronistic vantage point. Perhaps that claim should
now be clarified, since something must be said about how and why we
might read together the work of two figures who may turn out to be
only superficially related, if, that is, they are meaningfully related at all.
Part of the price that Borges has paid for his fame is that his name is now
used as a kind of shorthand for journalists and others who are tempted
to regard any technological innovation—from Wikipedia to the invention
of the internet itself—as having been somehow foreseen, foreshadowed,
or otherwise anticipated by Borges. To be sure, in some cases, this ten-
dency to namecheck Borges may be laziness or perhaps a simplistic desire
to contrive a respectable intellectual pedigree for whatever idea happens
to interest us. On other occasions, to engage in anachronistic projects
of literary interpretation is to run the risk of ignoring more fresh and
timely critical questions. Too often, we may be tempted to read Borges
and assume that the emergence of more recent cultural phenomena can
somehow be connected to him, even if we are hard-pressed to say exactly
how.9
As it turns out, Borges himself had something to say about this. In his
seminal essay on literary influence, “Kafka and His Precursors” [“Kafka y
sus precursores”] (SNF 363–65/OC 2.88–90), Borges had argued that
in the domain of literature the arrow of causation does not point from ear-
lier to later as it does in the ordinary world of causes and effects; rather,
the properly literary features of a text—i.e., those that are found salient
by other writers and readers—are only ever determined retrospectively, as
they are brought into dialogue with still other texts through the interpre-
tive labors of later generations of authors. He argues, for example, that for
us to read today certain pages from Kierkegaard, Léon Bloy, and ninth-
century Chinese writer Han Yu is to recognize that there is something
distinctively “Kafkaesque” about each of them, even if they have abso-
lutely nothing else in common. Borges hypothesizes that this enigmatic
characteristic of being recognizably “Kafkaesque” is both a constitutive
feature of their works and one which did not exist until Kafka began to
write. Kafka retroactively imbued his predecessors with qualities that they
did not previously have.10
Borges’s texts also possess relationally-bound meanings that only
emerge as a consequence of their being embedded in an endlessly mal-
leable creative framework. Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series, I argue,
is a critical element in this constantly evolving landscape; it actualizes
certain latent possibilities in Borges’s texts, even if those possibilities are
(properly) regarded as anachronistic if what we have in mind is a narrow,
traditional notion of historical causation. For better or worse, there is no
12 D. LARAWAY
principled distinction to be made between responsible and irresponsible

invocations of Borges. The evidence to be marshalled must be assessed
exclusively in terms of its ability to illuminate the phenomena under dis-
cussion. And ultimately there is no criterion other than the reader’s own
judgment when it comes to determining whether the joint readings of
Brooker and Borges in the essays that follow are persuasive.
This brings us to the second aspect of the present study that requires
some discussion. What can Borges contribute to our appreciation of
Brooker’s Black Mirror, particularly when other sources and influences,
more germane, more closely related to Brooker’s own experience and
worldview, are already in evidence? If our objective were merely to identify
the most proximate sources of inspiration for the episodes of Black Mir-
ror, it might make more sense to train our attention elsewhere, perhaps on
programs such as Tales of the Unexpected (1979–1988) or Rod Serling’s
Twilight Zone (1959–1964). Serling’s program, for instance, also made
excellent use of the anthology format in its positing of fantastic premises
in order to guide the reader to a surprise or twist ending, frequently in
the service of some particular social allegory.11 For that matter, Brooker
at one point was asked to identify the cultural artifacts that he regarded
as having most influenced him; he responded with a list of one hundred
items, the vast majority of them television shows and movies. The Twilight
Zone predictably makes an appearance, while Borges’s name is nowhere
to be found among the authors that he mentions (Brooker, Inside Black
Mirror 314–16; see also Singal).12
But as informative and valuable as traditional studies of literary influ-
ence may be, they are in a sense perpendicular to the purposes of the
chapters that follow. For if Brooker trains our attention upon aspects of
Borges’s works that might have otherwise remain unnoticed and unreal-
ized, Borges in turn reminds us that Brooker’s concerns in Black Mirror
deserve engagement from within a determinate literary and philosophical
tradition. The temptation for viewers of Black Mirror is to assume that
some of the series’ most intriguing plotlines are predicated in some strong
sense upon technological innovations which as of this date remain only
hypothetical or perhaps imaginable as an extension of our current tech-
nological habitus. But just as Brooker could ask us to entertain the notion
that Borges’s mirror of ink is a sort of proto-iPad, so too we might regard
Brooker’s black mirror as essentially a sophisticated book, i.e., a more
contemporary embodiment of the material device associated par excel-
lence with Borges. In this regard, Brooker’s imagination may be located
within a literary and philosophical tradition that is deep indeed. The essays
of this book thus constitute a kind of double-reading, forwards and back-
wards, of the work of Borges and Brooker. The success of the project will
be predicated upon a very simple criterion: whether the reader finds it
insightful and persuasive, that is, whether it responsibly moves the con-
versation along in a fruitful direction or whether at the end of the day
it leaves the reader unconvinced and unsatisfied. Ultimately it is my hope
that someone initially drawn to this book out of an interest in Brooker will
come away with a newfound appreciation for Borges. And if I have done
my job well the reader of Borges will come away feeling that Brooker is
an indispensable interlocutor for the Argentine author.
Remediating Borges and Brooker

In 1999, as the curtains were being drawn upon the twentieth century, Jay
Bolter and Richard Grusin published their classic Remediation, a work on
emerging media forms and their relation to older, more familiar expres-
sive technologies. Following a line of investigation pursued by McLuhan
decades earlier, Bolter and Grusin remind us that newer and older forms
of media alike are ill-served when we attempt to understand the former
as supplanting or overturning the latter. Rather, the history of media
could be understood as the story of how the vast menagerie of expres-
sive forms—all of which, obviously, contain a technological dimension—
cannibalize and transform one another in ways that we have not always
appreciated. Our own age, they note, is characterized by two comple-
mentary impulses: toward immediacy (i.e., an attempt to erase all traces
of media in order for us to realize the fantasy of pure, unmediated experi-
ence) and hypermediacy (i.e., a tendency to multiply mediatic forms and
platforms so as to be fully immersed in them). Remediation is the name
that Bolter and Grusin give to that kind of double logic by which both
processes are engaged and diverse media objects negotiate the terms of
their coexistence (3–15).
Although Bolter and Grusin’s project was primarily descriptive and
analytical in nature, it also hints at a set of tacit interpretive strategies that
could prove useful here. Borges and Brooker belong to different media
universes in many respects. Brooker avails himself of all the techniques
that new media make available to him (as we have seen with regard to the
Black Mirror title sequence); Borges was content to take as his starting
point the well-established form of the short story and he is quite formally
14 D. LARAWAY
conservative in many respects. But rather than accept the conventions

of their preferred media forms or genres as interpretive constraints that
determine how each should be read, there is much to be gained by seek-
ing to understand how Borges and Brooker remediate each other. Thus
the filmic or visual logic inherent in some of Borges’s short stories will
be brought out by way of reference to Brooker’s labors and the array of
literary devices with which Borges has made us familiar will help us in
return to appreciate the timelessness of Brooker’s work.
The interpretive project in the pages that follow does not aspire to
provide overarching conclusions about either of the two. Rather, my aims
are much more humble. Each chapter is intended to be free-standing and
each features a joint reading of one episode of Black Mirror and one short
story by Borges. The emphasis thus falls on the task of remediating Borges
through Brooker and Brooker through Borges, always by means of a close
reading of their specific works, rather than a more generalized discussion
of their respective places in the philosophical or media landscape. This
implies an approach to theoretical tools and methods that is limited, cir-
cumspect, anything but doctrinaire, and which therefore declines to pro-
vide any exhaustive examination of the theoretical underpinnings of their
work.13 So, one may find the names of figures such as Žižek, McLuhan,
and Hayles occasionally sprinkled throughout the pages that follow while
other equally important theorists—Baudrillard, for example—barely make
an appearance, as relevant as they might turn out to be for the develop-
ment of an overall theory of Brooker’s or Borges’s work. And although I
have tried to be responsible and discriminate in my use of theory, I have
not hesitated to sacrifice orthodoxy to whatever immediate interpretive
challenges the specific works in question have seemed to me to present.
The same goes, to some extent, with the relevant secondary literature,
which in the case of Brooker remains mostly of a popular, nonprofessional
nature, although important scholarly contributions on Black Mirror are
just now beginning to find their way into print. As for Borges, the body
of secondary literature is already disconcertingly vast and my engagement
with those sources has perhaps erred on the side of circumspection in the
hopes of not frightening away my nonspecialist readers. Wherever possi-
ble, discussions of issues of more narrow interest have been relegated to
the endnotes. Throughout, my intention has been to not lose sight of
the thread of dual readings of both Borges and Brooker that I develop
in each chapter, with an invitation to the reader to dig in to some of the
most valuable secondary sources to the extent that he or she may take an
interest in them.
Chapter 2, “Forgetting and Forgiving in an Age of Total Recall,”
examines the ways in which Borges’s story “Funes the Memorious” [“Fu-
nes el memorioso”] and the Black Mirror episode “The Entire History
of You” (S01:E03) complicate our ordinary understanding of memory as
a kind of mental or computational process. Borges and Brooker suggest
that models of computational memory that are based on data process-
ing devices need to be supplemented with an understanding of memory
that is grounded in both the lived body and the social collectivities to
which we belong. Mark B. N. Hansen has suggested that the virtual is
always already a feature of the lived body rather than something subse-
quently added on to it (Bodies 1–22), memory too will turn out to be
an ineluctably social phenomenon, a feature of not only the individual
body but also the social bodies or collectivities which shape us. The ten-
sion between these two models of memory catalyzes Borges and Brook-
er’s tales. In the latter case, we come to see that the boundless, infallible
memories that the protagonist enjoys are nonetheless perversely faithless
in their own way. They turn out to require an element of sociality—not
to say trust and even love—in order to become meaningful and not mere
exercises in the mechanical conversion of experiential data into fungi-
ble information. In similar fashion—albeit without the erotic subtext—
Borges’s “Funes the Memorious” suggests that even infallible, computer-
like memories may require an element of collective, social negotiation in
order for them to become meaningful. In both cases, embodied memory
provides a virtual supplement to more traditional notions of recall. The
mediatic forms through which those memories are disclosed will thus have
something to teach us about the nature of the social ties that bind us.
Chapter 3, “Nostalgia, the Virtual, and the Artifice of Eternity,”
explores perhaps the most popular episode to date of Black Mirror. “San
Junipero” (S03:E04) has been hailed as an uncharacteristically sunny tale
in a television series better known for its bleak, dystopian view of the
impact of new technologies on social relationships. Set primarily in the
1980s, it asks us to imagine not only that one may live forever in a vir-
tual environment but that the fantasy spaces opened up by new technolo-
gies may make it possible to realize possibilities for personal fulfillment
that we might not have imagined before. But it is far from clear how we
are to understand the relevant notion of the “virtual” in the world that
Brooker asks us to imagine. I argue that a helpful clue for reading “San
16 D. LARAWAY
Junipero” may be found in Borges’s classic story from Ficciones, “The

South” [“El Sur”], which not only features a similarly nuanced and con-
ceptually rich notion of “the virtual” but also exploits the structure of
nostalgia, which is an essential catalyst for Brooker’s tale. The result is a
dual reading of Brooker and Borges that underscores how the logic of
the virtual is not to be found only in fanciful science-fiction scenarios but
may be deeply embedded in our most banal experiences, rendering them
alternately hopeful and terrifying.
Chapter 4, “Executable Code,” considers some of the ways that “Ban-
dersnatch,” Black Mirror’s most technologically and narratively ambitious
episode enters into dialogue with Borges’s classic story, “The Garden of
Forking Paths” [“El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan”]. Although it
was not the first streaming video program to require the viewer’s active
participation in the telling of its story, “Bandersnatch” is undoubtedly
the most intellectually rich and provocative such example to date.14 The
episode’s protagonist is a computer programmer who attempts to con-
vert a choose-your-own-adventure novel into an interactive video game
but finds himself caught up in conceptual labyrinths that call into ques-
tion our familiar notions of linear time, not to mention subjectivity and
the idea of free will. He comes to intuit that the decisions that he once
thought himself free to make may turn out to rely instead upon dark,
incomprehensible forces that are apparently vested elsewhere, ostensibly
in the program’s viewer. But the viewer’s autonomy will be called into
question as well, as we begin to see ourselves as being subject to the same
kind of forces that threaten to nullify the protagonist’s sense of self.
The episode recalls in unmistakable ways Borges’s celebrated story,
which is often credited with helping to pave the way for the development
of hypertext narrative (Sassón-Henry 23–37). His classic tale of espionage
and betrayal exemplifies the same binary logic that informs the interactive
decision nodes of “Bandersnatch.” But it also sensitizes us to the ways
that the paths we have not chosen nevertheless leave their traces upon
what Borges intriguingly alludes to as the agent’s “obscure body,” trans-
forming it into a persistent reminder of those infinitely bifurcating paths.
By reading “Bandersnatch” and Borges together, we shall come to see
how the figure of the labyrinth—with its countless junctions and turns
that double in upon themselves—reveals itself in a corporeal register and
not merely as a conceptual exercise. We shall conclude by examining the
possibility that, even if our choices may not be altogether free, they might
still be invested with ethical significance.
Perhaps I may bring these pages to a close by returning once again to

Borges’s “The Mirror of Ink.” We have already noted how Yaqub gazes
into the mirror of ink and becomes a witness to his own death, as his
life and its representation in the black mirror come briefly and fatally to
coincide. As if to underscore the moral we are to draw from Yaqub’s
hubris, our narrator ends the story by citing the benedictory words that
al-Masmudı̄ had allegedly pronounced to Burton in passing the tale along
to him. But instead of a hand cupping a mirror of ink in an outstretched
palm, the story concludes with the no less memorable image of the inter-
vention of another hand, only now it is the hand that grasps the keys of
mercy and vengeance and which belongs to the Creator himself. “Glory
to Him Who does not die,” al-Masmudı̄ solemnly intones, “and Who
holds within His hand the two keys, of infinite Pardon and infinite Pun-
ishment” [“La gloria sea con Aquel que no muere y tiene en su mano
las dos llaves del ilimitado Perdón y del infinito Castigo”] (CF 62/OC
1.343). With these words, the mirror of ink has been effectively displaced.
It has been supplanted by the keys of infinite judgment, which is just
another way of saying that they pass out of the realm of the human alto-
gether. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting finale to a brief narrative
that had invited us to consider how the object of our desires seems to
always elude our grasp and the technological machinations we contrive
to satisfy those desires always seem to displace them further, despite all
our best efforts. Whether we take as our starting point Borges’s mirror
of ink or the reflections of Brooker’s black mirror, the result in either
case is a kind of displacement and deferral that suggests our search for
self-knowledge may be never-ending.
Notes
1. References to Borges’s works will cite first the English-language transla-
tions—abbreviated CF (Collected Fictions ), SP (Selected Poems ), and SNF
(Selected Non-Fictions )—followed by the Spanish versions, which are taken
from the 1986 Emecé edition of his collected works (hereafter: OC ).
2. Borges himself seemed to encourage his reader to regard the tale lightly:
it was not published as a separate, free-standing short story in A Universal
History of Iniquity [Historia universal de la infamia] (1935), but rather as
one of six brief narrations bundled together under the decidedly inelegant
title of “Et cetera.”
3. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, in the notes to his edited anthology of Borges’s
texts, summarizes the textual history of “El espejo de tinta” in this way:
18 D. LARAWAY
“This text, which was originally attributed to Richard Burton’s The Lake
Regions of Central Equatorial Africa (a book Borges admitted to never
having read), is really based, according to Di Giovanni, on Edward Lane’s
Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. In thus ‘mistaking’ the
correct source, Borges changed the adaptation into a different text. By dis-
placement, he gave it a new meaning. Taking into account his well-known
childhood obsession with mirrors, the ‘quotation’ becomes an effective
disguise to mask the subjectivity of the text. From Borges’s point of view,
what really mattered was that in this text, the mirror was made of ink,
tying together his old fears and the act of writing” (343–44).
4. Do all the episodes of the program finally belong to the same narrative
universe? While the storylines of each episode are autonomous, recurring
themes and motifs—for instance, the White Bear glyph—certainly has pro-
vided fans of the program with license to come up with their own theories.
Brooker himself has stated that we might regard the different episodes of
Black Mirror as belonging not to the same universe per se but rather to
what he calls, with a nod to “Bandersnatch,” the Black Mirror “multi-
verse” (IGN).
5. For a rich discussion of the “technologies of inscription” that are native
to Borges’s work and a warning to those that would regard him in a fairly
straightforward way as a “precursor” to more recent experiments with
hypertextual media, see the excellent study of Jerónimo Arellano.
6. Of course the duration of this moment varies, depending upon a variety
of factors including the speed of one’s internet connection, the processing
speed of one’s device, and so on. The point, however, is that the notion
of the black screen that appears prior to the presentation of content is
not necessarily a matter of temporal, but rather, logical, priority. For an
insightful discussion of the black mirror motif from a Jungian perspective,
see Singh.
7. For reflections by a practicing analyst on the role of the “black mirror” of
new media in the formation of self-identity and sexual development, see
Lemma.
8. We might recall note as a point of reference here Mark B. N. Hansen’s
observations concerning what he calls the “mixed reality paradigm.” It is
fruitless and misguided, he suggests, to imagine a realm of pure bodily
intentionality that is set over against technical devices that are external
to it. Rather, our primordial way of bodily being in the world is always
already interpenetrated with technical features that essentially allow it to be
encoded it into determinate social and expressive frameworks (see Bodies
in Code 1–22).
9. Andrew Brown has observed that this tendency to develop superficial,

anachronistic readings of Borges may be ultimately ascribed to our per-
sistent “desire for a Borgesian present” (231). David Ciccoricco has sim-
ilarly warned of the dangers of such readings on the grounds that they
encourage us to posit that Borges’s work is somehow “incomplete” or
“deficient,” without tacitly supposing that his ideas required unpacking by
subsequent generations of writers who have a greater array of technologi-
cal tools at their disposal (75). The danger in any case is that we attempt to
avail ourselves of the peculiar cachet that attaches to the name “Borges” in
order to justify projects of comparative interpretation that have not been
properly justified. But I think that Brown provides an intriguing clue for
us to follow. He suggests that we think of the anachronistic Borgeses of
our contemporary critical and journalistic landscape as hrönir, those odd
artifacts described in “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” that have their origins
in the imagination and yet which subsequently come to instantiate them-
selves materially in the real world (Brown 237). Scholars who draw upon
Borges in response to the emergence of new technologies have failed to
recognize far too often that their work is not narrowly descriptive as they
had believed, but rather is creative in nature: it tends to summon into
being the very phenomena that they had presumed merely to catalogue
or describe (Brown 236–38).
10. Here is how Borges expresses the point, after listing a catalogue of appar-
ently unrelated items culled from the history of literature: “If I am not
mistaken, the heterogenous pieces I have listed resemble Kafka: if I am
not mistaken, not all of them resemble each other. Kafka’s idiosyncrasy is
present in each these writings, to a greater or lesser degree, but if Kafka
had not written, we would not perceive it: that is to say, it would not exist”
[“Si no me equivoco, las heterogéneas piezas que he enumerado se pare-
cen a Kafka; si no me equivoco, no todas se parecen entre sí. Este último
hecho es el más significativo. En cada uno de esos textos está la idiosincra-
sia de Kafka, en grado mayor o menor, pero si Kafka no hubiera escrito,
no la percibiríamos; vale decir, no existiría.”] (SNF 365/OC 2.89). For
more on this argument, see Laraway (317–19).
11. See Sheffield for a discussion of the claim that Black Mirror plays the same
role for our generation as The Twilight Zone played in an earlier era.
12. Of course this is not to say that Borges did not contribute something to
Brooker in important ways but only that that influence was either uncon-
scious or indirect, transmitted through intermediaries such as Christopher
Nolan. Unsurprisingly, Brooker acknowledged the influence of Nolan’s
2010 film Inception on his work; Nolan in turn has explicitly recognized
Borges’s influence on that film in particular (Itzkoff).
13. As this manuscript is being prepared for press, a collection of scholarly
essays edited by Angela M. Cirucci and Barry Vacker has just appeared;
20 D. LARAWAY
it follows on the heels of a similar Spanish-language anthology of critical

work edited by Martínez-Lucena and Barraycoa. For explicit attempts to
locate Black Mirror in the media theory landscape, see Scolari and Vacker
and Espelie (who read Black Mirror through the lens of McLuhan); for
a more narrowly Baudrillardian reading of the series see Jiménez-Morales
and Lopera Mármol.
14. A notable precursor was the children’s program, Puss in Book: Trapped in
an Epic Tale, which debuted on Netflix in June of 2017 (see Reynolds).
CHAPTER 2
Forgetting and Forgiving in an Age

of Total Recall
Abstract This chapter examines how Borges’s story “Funes the Memori-
ous” [“Funes el memorioso”] and the Black Mirror episode “The Entire
History of You” complicate our ordinary understanding of memory as a
kind of mental process. Borges and Brooker suggest that models of com-
putational memory that are modeled on data processing devices need to
be supplemented with an understanding of memory that is grounded in
both the lived body and the social collectivities to which we belong. In
the latter case, we come to see that the boundless, infallible memories
that the protagonist enjoys are nonetheless perversely faithless in their
own way. They turn out to require an element of sociality in order to
become meaningful and not mere exercises in the mechanical conversion
of experiential data into fungible information. In similar fashion, Borges’s
“Funes the Memorious” suggests that even infallible, computer-like mem-
ories may require an element of collective, social negotiation in order for
them to become meaningful. In both cases, embodied memory provides
a virtual supplement to more traditional notions of recall. The mediatic
forms through which those memories are disclosed have something to
teach us about the nature of the social ties that bind us together.
Keywords Memory · Forgetfulness · Ethics · Media · “The Entire

History of You” · “Funes the Memorious”
© The Author(s) 2020 21

D. Laraway, Borges and Black Mirror, Literatures of the Americas,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44238-5_2
22 D. LARAWAY
Breath Upon the Face of a Mirror

When the world was still new, not long after the flesh of the first men had
been formed from the sacred maize, the vision of our ancestors knew no
bounds. Their sight passed unobstructed through trees and mountains,
across the endless sky and through the depths of the earth. “Perfect was
their sight, and perfect was their knowledge of everything beneath the
sky,” the ancient elders said. If the first men “gazed about them, looking
intently, they beheld that which was in the sky and that which was upon
the earth. Instantly they were able to behold everything” (Christenson
197). But the gods that had fashioned the first men recognized that these
creatures were too much and yet too little like them. For men to see
everything just as the creators did and yet not be numbered among them
was a burden too awful to bear. So the creator-god, Heart of Sky, caused
a mist to form upon the faces of the humans: “their eyes were merely
blurred […] they were blinded like breath upon the face of a mirror”
(197, 201). The breath of the god clouded the vision of our progenitors,
allowing them to see only what was within their immediate surroundings.
And when their vision had been thus circumscribed, the first men were
finally ready to receive the female consorts the gods had prepared for
them. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that a precondition of conjugal
happiness is the capacity to see only so much and nothing more.
At any rate this is what we are told in the ancient book of Mayan scrip-
ture, the Popol Vuh. We might have been tempted to regard the powers
and perils of total vision—and total recall, that corollary and companion
of unbounded sight—as a uniquely contemporary fantasy, an invitation
to entertain a decidedly twenty-first-century dream of visual prostheses,
cloud computing, and the finely-tuned algorithms that facilitate instan-
taneous data recall. But perhaps the old legends of the highland Maya
should give us pause. One might wonder whether the scribes of the Popol
Vuh in crafting their creation story had not somehow seen our day and
issued a warning to us precisely when we might have been inclined to for-
get that our epistemic limitations might turn out to be a blessing after all.
It is one thing to dream about wielding the powers of limitless sight and
infallible memory. But to lay claim to cognitive superpowers, they seem
to suggest, might well mean to set aside those strictures—moral as well
as epistemic—that make sociality possible at all.
This is a lesson learned too late by Liam Foxwell [Toby Kebbell], the
protagonist of “The Entire History of You” (TEHY), the final episode
Another random document with
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Any boy can easily convert a toy rubber balloon into a real flier by
constructing the simple device shown in the illustration for filling it
with hydrogen. Procure a clay pipe and break off the stem near the
bowl. Bore a hole in a cork, or preferably a rubber stopper, selected
to fit some bottle and insert the smaller end of the pipestem in the
hole. As the stem tapers, if the hole has been made for the smaller
end, a tight fit is assured by simply pressing the stem well into the
cork. Tie the open end of the stem on the balloon tightly over the
larger end of the pipestem, and have ready a thread to tie the stem
of the balloon when it is filled.
Procure from a local drug store 1 oz. of hydrochloric acid. Place
some nails, or better still, a few strips of zinc, in the bottle and cover
them with a little water, then pour a small quantity of the hydrochloric
acid into the bottle and assemble as shown in the illustration. In a
few minutes hydrogen gas will be given off, and if the joints are tight,
the balloon will begin to fill. After it has expanded as much as it will
stand without breaking, tie the end with the thread, and cut off any
parts of the mouthpiece that may weigh it down. If sufficient gas has
been passed into the balloon it will rise to the ceiling. Balloons filled
in this manner have risen to a height of several hundred feet.
Caution: Do not allow the hydrochloric acid to come in contact with
the skin or clothing, as it may cause frightful burns. Do not under any
circumstance fill the balloon near a flame or allow fire to come near
the bottle.—Contributed by Ralph C. Jenkins, Manchester, Vt.
How to Polish Instrument Bases
There seems to be a feeling among mechanical and electrical
experimenters that there is something mysterious about the process
of wood finishing, and often one may see a really fine piece of
apparatus spoiled by mounting it on a shellacked baseboard. I have
found that it is a very simple matter to produce almost a piano finish
on all woods, even those as soft as poplar, in the following manner.
Quick-drying wood dyes should be avoided. Simply rub down a piece
of ordinary water-color cake into some plain water and apply freely
with a rag, rubbing it in well. Any color may be obtained in this way,
but if this is not convenient, use an oil stain made quite thin with
turpentine. Next apply a thin coat of shellac, which should be
sandpapered when it is dry. A coat of ordinary varnish is then
applied, and when this is thoroughly dried, rub lightly with fine steel
wool. One coat of varnish may be sufficient, although several coats
will produce a richer finish. Rub the last coats down well with an oily
rag dipped in some abrasive material, such as tooth powder or metal
polish, and finish with a simple oil rub. A beautiful, soft, transparent
effect may be obtained in this way on very ordinary woods. Any
open-grained woods, such as oak, must be filled with a paste filler
after staining.—Contributed by John D. Adams, Phoenix, Ariz.
Locating Droplight in the Dark
The Cord Fastened to the Door Casing is Easily Located and Followed to the
Lamp
A simple device for locating a droplight can be had by putting a

nail or screw eye into the side of the door casing, high enough to
clear persons passing under it, but within easy reach of an uplifted
hand, and running a cord from it to the light. It is not difficult to locate
the cord attached to the casing and to follow it to the light.—
Contributed by H. S. Craig, Rushford, Minnesota.
¶If kerosene oil is used when drilling, reaming, or turning malleable

iron, it will make the work much smoother.
How to Make an Experimental Lead Screw
A Copper Wire Wrapped around and Soldered to a Straight Rod for a Lead
Screw
Often in experimental work a long, narrow, parallel screw is

desired for regulating, or moving, some part of the apparatus in a
straight line. A simple way of making such a screw is to tin
thoroughly a small straight rod of the required length and diameter.
After wiping off all the surplus solder while it is yet hot, wrap it with a
sufficient length of bright copper wire and fasten the ends. This wire
is then securely soldered in place by running the solder on while
holding the screw over a blue gas flame. To make the solder run
freely, brush frequently during the heating with a small mucilage
brush dipped into the soldering acid. An even pitch can be secured
by winding on two wires side by side at the same time, the second
one being unwound before soldering.
Self-Setting Rat Trap
The Paper Stretched over the Barrel Top was Cut after Feeding the Rats on It
for Some Time
A suburbanite successfully trapped a bunch of rats by stretching a

piece of stout elastic paper on the top of an open barrel. Spreading
food on this paper he allowed it to remain until the suspicions of the
rats were allayed, then he cut two right-angled slashes in the paper
with a razor. Next morning he found seven of the pests in the barrel.
Smoker’s Cabinet or Cellarette
The Smoker’s Cabinet Makes an Attractive Addition to the Furniture of a

Den, and should be Made Up and Finished to Match Other Pieces of the
Room
This design, when completed, takes up a wall space 20 in. wide by

31 in. high, and extends out 14 in. The material necessary for it is as
follows:
2 sides, ⁷⁄₈ by 14 by 31 in.
1 back, ³⁄₄ by 14 by 28¹⁄₈ in.
1 bottom, ⁷⁄₈ by 14 by 20 in.
1 top, ⁷⁄₈ by 10¹⁄₄ by 18³⁄₄ in.
1 bottom shelf, ⁷⁄₈ by 10¹⁄₄ by 14 in.
Door:
2 stiles, ³⁄₄ by 2 by 14¹⁄₂ in.
2 rails, ³⁄₄ by 2 by 10 in. (not including tenons, if such are desired).
1
panel, ³⁄₈ by 10³⁄₄ by 11¹⁄₄ in.
Upper drawer:
1 front, ³⁄₄ by 4 by 14 in.
1 back, ³⁄₈ by 3¹⁄₄ by 13¹⁄₂ in.
2 sides, ¹⁄₂ by 4 by 9⁷⁄₈ in.
1 bottom, ³⁄₈ by 9⁵⁄₈ by 13¹⁄₂ in.
Lower drawer:
1 front, ³⁄₄ by 5 by 14 in.
1 back, ³⁄₈ by 4¹⁄₄ by 13¹⁄₂ in.
2 sides, ¹⁄₂ by 5 by 12⁷⁄₈ in.
1 bottom, ³⁄₈ by 12⁵⁄₈ by 13¹⁄₂ in.
1 piece for keys, ³⁄₄ by 2¹⁄₄ by 6¹⁄₄ in.
1 pair hinges.
2 drawer pulls.
Screws and nails.
In constructing the cabinet, the outer frame should first be made.

The sides can be laid out and cut to the desired design. The top and
bottom crosspieces should then be squared up, and the tenons cut
as shown, the bottom tenons extending farther, to balance the
design. The top is set in ³⁄₄ in. from the back edge. Holes should be
marked and cut for the ³⁄₄-in. keys, after which the four parts may be
assembled, and suitable keys driven in place. The back for the
cabinet is made from ³⁄₄-in. material, squared up to fit between the
sides, and be flush with their top edges while resting on the bottom
crosspiece. It can be fastened in place with nails. The top and
bottom pieces of the cabinet proper can then be made, and secured
in place with round-head screws, after which the door may be made
and fitted. The stiles and rails of the door should be rabbeted for a
³⁄₈-in. square groove, to hold the panel in place. The frame can be
made sufficiently strong, if properly glued and held together with
dowel pins passing through the stiles into the rails. If it is desired to
fasten the frame with tenons, an extra amount must be added to the
length of the rails given in the stock list. The panel should not be
glued in place, as the shrinkage of the wood will cause it to crack.
In making the drawers, the front should be rabbeted for a groove
to fit the drawer bottom, and sidepieces can be fitted and nailed in
place. These should be rabbeted for grooves, into which the bottom
and end pieces fit.
If the cabinet is finished in mission style, or fumed oak, hammered
copper or brass hinges and drawer pulls will go well with the general
appearance of the design.
Skis and Ski-running
Running, Jumping and Climbing
By Stillman Taylor
Part II
Before the beginner makes the attempt to ski, he should see that his
complete outfit is perfectly suited to his purpose. The shoes
should be nicely adjusted to fit snugly between the metal toe plates
of the binding, and new holes should be punched in the straps
wherever needed to adjust the harness snugly and comfortably to
the feet. Many of the positions required in executing the various
turns and swings may be practiced at home, that the novice may get
some idea of the correct position of the feet and body assumed by
expert skiers. For the initial practice outside, it is a good plan to
select a frosty day when the snow is old and settled by the wind.
This will introduce the novice to the sport under favorable conditions,
while if the first trials are made shortly after a heavy snowfall, or
upon a mild day when the snow is thawing, only discouragement will
be experienced. Begin with one stick—or two if timid—and pick out
an easy-sloping hill with a gradual run to the level ground. A few
scattered trees and rocks will do no harm, for it is a good plan to
learn how to avoid them from the beginning.
How to Turn on Skis
This and the correct manner of standing on skis are easily

mastered if the beginner will but remember that the weight of the
body should rest largely upon the advanced foot without bending the
body at the ankle too much, or raising the heel from the ski. This is
the correct position to assume when standing for a rest and for
sliding, and this as well as turning should be practiced on the level.
To make the kick turn, simply raise the point of the ski until the heel
rests on the snow, as shown in Fig. 1. Swing the ski around by
turning the point out and back until the two skis are point to heel, as
shown in Fig. 2. When this, the most difficult position of the three, is
assumed, raise the point of the other ski as high as convenient to
avoid tripping, keep the heel down and swing the ski around over the
heel of the other until both are facing in the same direction, as shown
in Fig. 3. A little practice will make it possible for the novice to turn
quickly, and if all turns are made with the advanced foot, when
practicing on the level, no trouble will be experienced later on in
attempting to turn on a steep slope. The stick is really indispensable
for this practice, and while two may be used, the single stick will be
found assistance enough for any active person.
When skiing on level ground the correct movement is rather more
of a slide than the motion used in walking or skating. The body is
thrown forward on one ski and the slide is made with both feet, most
of the body weight being thrown on the advanced ski, while the rear
foot is slid forward without stopping the forward travel, as shown in
Fig. 4. The expert skier moves forward in long gliding steps without
raising the ski, but bending the knees slightly to slide the ski ahead.
The feet should be kept as close together as possible to make a
narrow track and the stick used to lengthen the slide. At the
beginning it is a good plan to endeavor to make a long slide with
each advancement of the foot, rather than strive to take long steps.
The speed of level running depends, of course, upon the condition of
the snow. On hard, well-packed snow, sliding is easiest and greater
speed obtained, while in deep and soft snow less speed is the rule.
When skiing on the hard snow of a road, four miles an hour is the
average speed, and for average level running, the skier will cover
about the same distance as when walking along a good path.
Fig. 9
Fig. 1 The Skier
Raise the Runs
Point of the Straight
Ski until the Downhill on
Heel Rests One Ski and
on the Uses the
Snow Other as a
Brake
Fig. 2 Fig. 8
Swing the On Hard
Ski Around Snow the
by Turning Edges of
the Point the Skis
Out and may be
Back Used to
Check the
Speed
Fig. 7
Fig. 3
When
Raise the
Running
Point of the
Downhill
Other Ski as
One Ski
High as
should Be in
Convenient
Advance of
to Avoid
the Other a
Tripping
Few Inches
Fig. 4
The Body is
Thrown
Forward on
One Ski and Fig. 6
the Slide is The
Made with Herringbone
Both Feet is Much
Fig. 5 Used When
The Skier the Skier
Naturally Wishes to
Places His Travel up a
Skis at Short and
Right Steep
Angles Incline
Rather than
Permit the
Slipping
Backward
When traveling uphill, the regular sliding gait will suffice if the
slope is gradual, but when a steep grade is encountered and the ski
slips backward, the skier stands quite erect, raises the point of his
ski about 3 in., and slaps it down smartly, without pulling it backward
or making any attempt to push his body forward with the stick. This
slap of the ski makes the smooth surface of the runner adhere better
than when the runner is slid forward in the usual manner. If the hill is
very steep, the skier will naturally place his skis at right angles rather
than permit the slipping backward. This is known as “side-stepping,”
and is shown in Fig. 5. In doing this, the heel of the ski must be
raised clear of the snow and the upper foot lifted uphill, then the
lower foot brought up to the last step of the upper foot, hence it is
extremely tiring for other than a short distance.
A variation of this movement, which is known to skiers as the “half
side step.” and which is made by advancing the foot with the legs
somewhat wider apart, and the skis placed at not quite so acute an
angle with the hill, is more useful when climbing the ordinary steep
grade and is far less laborious. If the skier knows how to handle his
implements, side-stepping may be done backward when necessary.
The “herringbone” is another step which is much used when the
skier wishes to travel up a short and steep incline. This step is made
by stretching the legs rather wide apart and pointing the toes out, as
shown in Fig. 6, at a decided angle, so that the knees are bent
inward and the inside edges of the skis cut into the snow. A variation
of this is the “half herringbone,” the skis being turned out at a less
acute angle. These special steps for special purposes are all useful
now and then in mountain climbing, but when a long distance is to be
covered, the skier will conserve his energy by mounting the hill in a
zigzag fashion rather than attempting to climb straight up. The track
of the skier will then resemble the course of a boat tacking through a
narrow inlet against a head of wind, and while more ground is
covered than when going straight up the steepest part of the hill,
progress is faster and much hard work is avoided.
When running straight downhill, one ski should be in advance of
the other a few inches, and the skis must be held quite close
together so that they touch, or nearly so, as shown in Fig. 7. To
make a narrow track, most expert skiers hold the knees together with
the back knee slightly bent. However, the body should be perfectly
and easily balanced. This is done, more or less, intuitively, by
beginning the run with the body thrown on the advanced foot, and
when full speed is attained the weight automatically shifts to the rear
foot. The novice will find it difficult at first to keep the skis together,
there being an almost uncontrollable desire to separate them to gain
a better balance. A good track will come with a little practice, but if
the skis are too short, or made without a groove, even an expert
would be compelled to keep his feet a trifle apart and make a double
track in order to keep from falling.
Fig. 10
The Christiania Swing is Accomplished by Pressing with Both Heels at the
Same Time While the Stick Digs Well into the Snow Above
When making the start preparatory for coasting downhill, the

novice may, if the slope is moderately steep, face in the desired
direction and assume the proper position by supporting himself with
the stick. On most very steep slopes, where the best coasting is to
be had, this is quite out of the question, and the skier must step
around quickly by moving the lower ski first. This will be somewhat
difficult to do until the novice gains more confidence, which will
quickly come after a little practice, and it is a good plan to practice
starting from the slope without the aid of the stick to anchor the body.
Owing to the fact that the skis do not reach much speed at the start
of the coast, even the slow novice will have plenty of time to make
the turn and face in the right direction before much speed is attained.
A comparatively crouching position, secured by bending the knees
and the body at the waist, will much lessen the liability of a fall
forward. This position enables the skier to control the balance of his
body with more certainty, and especially when coasting on a hill
where patches of ice, or crusted snow, and soft spots of unpacked
snow are encountered, a condition usually found wherever skiing is
enjoyed. When coasting, the stick, or sticks, should be firmly
grasped at the upper end with the looped thong, or strap, over the
wrist, and the end dragging behind. Balancing is done entirely at the
waist, and for straightaway running, the weight of the body will rest
largely upon the rear ski. The long running surface of the ski will
carry the skier over many bumps and hollows without disturbing the
balance of the body or causing a fall, providing the novice does not
lose his nerve. It is necessary to practice on rough and uneven
ground if the skier desires ever to attain much expertness, and
plenty of falls must be expected, but not dreaded by the beginner. A
fall on skis is by no means fraught with danger, and one may fall with
impunity providing all muscles are relaxed. Many beginners find
falling the easiest manner of stopping, but this should not be
necessary, providing the hints given are well understood and
practiced. However, the novice should have no fear of falling if he
wants to become proficient on skis, and to offset any timidity, which
so very often causes the novice to lean backward and fall in this
direction, it is a good plan to lean well forward to check this natural
tendency. Getting up after a fall is easily enough managed if the
head is pointing up the slope, but when the position is reversed
much floundering is necessitated. It would seem that this would be
obvious to all, yet the majority of beginners often forget it altogether.
Braking with the stick is only effective when the body is properly
balanced, and the stick is kept well forward and as nearly vertical as
possible. Straddling the stick, sitting upon it, or leaning backward on
it held at an angle, are slovenly methods which every novice should
avoid.
The “snowplow” is most largely used by all good skiers for braking,
stopping, and turning. This is accomplished by stretching the legs
wide apart and at the same time turning the toes in as much as
possible, thus presenting the side of the ski to the snow and
retarding the speed. Aside from straddling the legs wide apart, the
novice will have no trouble in learning this useful knack. For the first
practice, pick out a fairly steep hill road, or a hillside where the snow
is old and not soft. Begin the run as for coasting, and when good
speed has been attained, spread the legs wide apart, turn the toes in
and endeavor to control the speed with the skis rather than depend
upon the stick. On hard snow the edges of the ski may be used to
check the speed, but on ordinary soft and well-packed snow, the
runner may be kept quite flat. This is well shown in Fig. 8.
The knack of “stemming” is a variation of the snowplow, inasmuch
as the skier runs straight downhill on one ski, and turns the heel of
the other ski outward and downward and uses it as a brake, as in
Fig. 9. This is a very useful movement, and is largely used when
coasting down steep slopes, and when one has learned the knack of
it, stemming will serve for braking and steering, and is useful for
stopping by turning the skiing course uphill. To earn it, select a steep
hillside, coast down at an angle, with the feet a trifle part, and
endeavor to retard the speed with the stick and turn the heel of the
lower ski outward. This makes the turn and the skier faces uphill and
comes to a stop. By turning the heel of the lower ski outward and the
heel of the upper ski inward, the skis will travel downhill with a sort of
snowplow movement. When practicing these movements, the
beginner should endeavor to use the stick as little as possible and
learn to depend upon the skis for controlling the speed.
The “side slip” is useful on steep slopes, and is done by turning
the skis so that the runners are at a decided angle to the course
traveled. This affords the maximum braking by the skis alone, and is
especially effective when combined with the braking done with the
stick. Side-slipping may, of course, be done while the skier is
traveling forward, by keeping the skis close together so that the
edges almost touch. While this movement checks the speed in much
the same manner as stemming, side-slipping is less tiresome, since
the weight of the body gives the required braking effect, while, in
stemming, the muscles are called upon to keep the heel pressing
outward.

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Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory Angela M Cirucci

The Moral Uncanny In Black Mirror Margaret Gibson

Through the Black Mirror Deconstructing the Side

Photography FAQs Black and White 1st Edition David

Emotion Reason and Action in Kant Maria Borges

Borges between History and Eternity 1st Edition Hernan

Literary Cynics Borges Beckett Coetzee Arthur Rose

Moving Against the System The 1968 Congress of Black

More information about this series at

Borges and Black

Literatures of the Americas

Covre illustration: © Melisa Hasan

1 Possessed by the Mirror 1

2 Forgetting and Forgiving in an Age of Total Recall 21

3 Nostalgia, the Virtual, and the Artifice of Eternity 49

Works Cited 109

David Laraway received a Ph.D. in Romance Studies from Cornell Uni-

Possessed by the Mirror

Keywords Media · Materiality · Borges · Brooker

© The Author(s) 2020 1

managed, through his divinatory talents, to ingratiate himself with the

sought to domesticate. That Borges, the symbol par excellence of a gen-

Media, Materiality, and Mirrors

to enable the ideological infrastructure to repair itself under the guise of

Reading Borges with Brooker

principled distinction to be made between responsible and irresponsible

Remediating Borges and Brooker

conservative in many respects. But rather than accept the conventions

Junipero” may be found in Borges’s classic story from Ficciones, “The

Perhaps I may bring these pages to a close by returning once again to

9. Andrew Brown has observed that this tendency to develop superficial,

it follows on the heels of a similar Spanish-language anthology of critical

Forgetting and Forgiving in an Age

Keywords Memory · Forgetfulness · Ethics · Media · “The Entire

© The Author(s) 2020 21

Breath Upon the Face of a Mirror

A simple device for locating a droplight can be had by putting a

¶If kerosene oil is used when drilling, reaming, or turning malleable

Often in experimental work a long, narrow, parallel screw is

A suburbanite successfully trapped a bunch of rats by stretching a

The Smoker’s Cabinet Makes an Attractive Addition to the Furniture of a

This design, when completed, takes up a wall space 20 in. wide by

In constructing the cabinet, the outer frame should first be made.

How to Turn on Skis

This and the correct manner of standing on skis are easily

When making the start preparatory for coasting downhill, the

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