The irreducible multiplicity of sexes. A theoretical and comparative study on trans identities in literature and media

The differences between the narrative construction of cis and trans identities depend on the archetypes they are based on. The traditional models of hero’s journey, bildungsroman and autobiography provide cis narratives with structures that are centered on the hero’s Ego: any possible decentering tendency is solved by a re-centering countertendency. For lack of any traditional model, trans narratives, even when centered on the hero’s Ego, make the decentering process the primary narrative function: the re-centering attempts always appear provisional and other-directed. Trans narratives indirectly shed light on one of the oldest clichés of cis narratives: even when problematized, the Ego is a presupposition rather than an outcome, also because its gender identity lies ontologized and inert outside the limits of the narrative and often constitutes its horizon line. Only during the last two decades trans identities established themselves as autonomous subjectivities capable of elaborating their own narrative discourses, that is counter-discourses finally allowing them to write themselves into the discourses by which they have been written for centuries.