Political Geometry and Post-Humanist Reading in Historia universal de la infamia

Abstract

This article examines the three short stories about infamous Americans in Jorge Luis Borges' Historia universal de la infamia (1935): "El atroz redentor Lazarus Morell", "El proveedor de iniquidades Monk Eastman" and "El asesino desinteresado Bill Harrigan". Through an analysis of the English-language works cited as sources by Borges, as well as the Argentine tradition alluded to throughout the Historia, I argue that the Argentine writer not only offers a critica! reading of Anglo-American history but also the antinomies that defined Latinamericanist ideologies at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth.