Borges and Company: The Corporate Body in 'La loteria en Babilonia'

It is often alleged that Borges is a politically unsophisticated writer. While there may be a grain of truth to this claim, it is none the less the case that some of his individual texts lend themselves to politically nuanced readings. In the present study I develop just such an interpretation of 'La loteria en Babilonia', arguing that the text gains immeasurably when read against not only its material backdrop in historical Babylon, but against recent developments in political theory. Indeed, I suggest that we may in a sense regard Borges as an able interlocutor of figures such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri as we read his story as a kind of allegory of the evolution of Empire and its relation to the workings of chance.