The Becomings of a Mime: Dis/empowerment in Borges' "Emma Zunz"

Abstract

Abstract: In the short story "Emma Zunz," Borges depicts a character seeking revenge and justice, but to enact her clear, straightforward intentions, the eponymous protagonist must engage in a mirror game, a game of mimicry in which Emma Zunz reproduces diverse sources, creates an overlap, and in this manner undergoes a process of dis/empowerment. Her actions become overdetermined and acquire a multifaceted meaning, but lose its single, identifiable, and original intention. The murder, which as a single action should have completed her revenge, becomes part of a continuous unfolding of versions and subversions of the same event and, in this manner, reveals a narrative structure challenging the idea of an autonomous and self-contained rational subject. To shed light on the dis/empowerment ensuing when a character is described in terms of a potential to affect and be affected, my approach builds up on mimetic studies as well as on Deleuze's and Lacoue-Labarthe's reflections.