The Verbal and Visual Mirrors of Postcolonial Identity in Breyten Breytenbach’s All One Horse

Abstract

This paper explores Breyten Breytenbach’s repeated reference to mirrors and mirror images in both his verbal and visual texts and asks how they are engaged by the author to tease out the complexities informing the formation and representation of personal identity. It argues that Breytenbach postulates the mirror as a model space where personal identity is at once instated and contested through the inevitable interplay between the real subject and its reflected other. An analysis of some of the portraits reproduced in All One Horse: Fictions and Images (1990) serves to illustrate concretely how the mirror is incorporated into Breytenbach’s texts to evoke in his readers a sense of the paradoxes informing personal identity.

Opsomming
Hierdie artikel ondersoek Breyten Breytenbach se herhaalde verwysings na spieëls en spieëlbeelde in beide sy verbale en sy visuele tekste en vra hoe hulle deur die outeur aangewend word om die kompleksiteite wat die formasie en voorstelling van persoonlike identiteit informeer te ontlok. Daar word aangevoer dat Breytenbach die spieël postuleer as ’n model-spasie waar persoonlike identiteit terselfdertyd gevestig en betwis word deur die onvermydelike wisselwerking tussen die werklike subjek en sy gereflekteerde ander. ’n Analise van sommige van die portrette wat in All One Horse: Fictions and Images (1990) gereproduseer is, het ten doel om by die leser te illustreer hoe die spieël in Breytenbach se tekste inkorporeer word om by die leser ’n sin vir die paradokse wat persoonlike identiteit informeer te evokeer.