Leavesdropping on Two Men Talking

Abstract

This inquiry is presented as a Borges-like dream. The inquirer dreams that two men talk about their writing. The dreamer tries to understand what they are saying, what they mean. Their talk appears full of abstractions and jargon — connectivity, faciality, haecceity, masculinities, multiplicities, subjectivities. Another character, George Orwell, enters the dream to harrumph at the pretentious diction the two men use. One of them sees their collaborative writing as a nomadic inquiry which takes the form of seeing where it goes. The two men believe that when they write to each other they not only define themselves as men but also dissolve the boundaries between them. Indeed their collaborative writing may even be seen as a kind of love-making. As they finish their talk the dreamer in his reverie fancies them as lost in a labyrinth of their own making.