Inarticulateness, Power and Ethnic identity On Jorge Luis Borges’ The Gospel According to Mark

Abstract

This paper attempts to focus on Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Gospel according To Mark. Borges, an Argentina short story writer and translator, whose motherland is under long-term western colonization, identifies himself unconsciously with the western culture. His works mostly touch upon the themes of religion and philosophy. Along with post-colonialism theory’s springing up, critics began to analyze his works from the post-colonial perspective. The author thinks that this short story with religious implication parallels to the cultural invasion in the period of colonization, from powerful culture to weaker one. The author, thus, aims to use Michael Foucault’s viewpoints concerning power and knowledge to probe into the western cultural hegemony and ideological invasion reflected in this story. Besides, the loss and construction of the ethnic identity of the colonized will be discussed in details.