Ideal Identity Arises from Bricolage: Identity Issues in Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair

ABSTRACT Compared with his other works, The Twyborn Affair, as one of the three best novels in contemporary Australian writer Patrick White’s own opinion, has not received its due attention. Searching for the meaning of human existence is the basic theme in Twyborn. The protagonist makes the Whitean odyssey from France to Australia and to the UK in order to pursue h/er ideal identity. In the depiction of the protagonist’s journey of pursuing an ideal identity, White deconstructs the binary opposition between male and female via the protagonist’s three gender changes. After deconstructing the traditional identity system, White does not attempt to find a balance between male and female with the help of androgyny, but projects a new method to deal with identity issues—bricolage: abandoning settling all relations comprehensively by a unitary and fixed identity, but taking advantage of the polymorphism and fluidity of identity and using different selves in different situations. In Twyborn, White conveys a beyond-humanism-way to deal with identity issues. Ideal identity arises from bricolage and only bricoleur can be twyborn (twice born).