"How to Become a Rock": Non-Human Metaphors as Trans Paranarratives

Abstract

Non-human metaphors, including animal metaphors, are widely used to evoke trans experiences, but the blooming flowers and hatching butterflies are often reduced to mere tropes or clichés. This article investigates what a narrative approach to these non-human metaphors can offer us to reconceptualize trans existence. I employ Benjamin Biebuyck and Gunther Martens’s concept of the ‘paranarrative,’ which allows us to look at metaphors as creating an additional narrative layer where aspects of the main narrative can be deepened, nuanced, or even contested. In two case studies, I unearth hidden sides of trans experience evoked through non-human metaphors on a paranarrative level. In Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s novel Mijn lieve gunsteling, animal metaphors ranging from otters to birds bring to the surface a view of transness not limited to gender, but one that entails feelings of isolation and even uncontrollable desires. The metaphors in the novel Wormmaan by Mariken Heitman likewise raise attention to the connectedness between human, plants, and matter that society has tried to contain in limiting categorizations, such as gender divisions. By broadening the scope of trans as an embodied experience across various boundaries, this article calls for an expansive approach to trans narratology that reaches beyond gender towards the variety of affects that trans is capable of exposing.