Unmaking of an identity
I come from a long line of liars.” This happens to be the Dutch artist Valentijn Hoogenkamp’s counter-intuitive but extraordinarily interesting way to begin his book, Antiboy, which can be called a long personal essay or a slim memoir. It not only invites readers into the tumultuous journey he undertook that helped shape his identity but also underlines how this reconciliation was possible only by thwarting people’s expectations—the lies society tells about gender.
Hoogenkamp’s sparse but poignant prose is masterfully translated by the International Booker Prize-winning translator Michele Hutchinson. It’s laudable how much that is interlinked that the author manages to unpack in this tiny volume. For example, betrayal, primarily by one’s family—the very set of people whose trust like gender is assumed to be unquestionable—and secondarily by one’s own perceived image of oneself. This points towards the second major theme of the book: culture, which includes a whole set of variables like personal history, perception, image-making, gaze, and the instrument that informs all of it—the body.
For Hoogenkamp, the inspiration to introspect his self-image was his mother, who in turn had her fair share of trouble in life as she was conveniently left behind by her Jewish mother when she was four years old. Then, Hoogenkamp’s father’s stoic admission that he and his wife weren’t in love; they “were more like friends”. Right after offering these insights to the readers, Hoogenkamp brings up a “recovery room,” forcing them to foresee whether Antiboy will turn out to be a story about the author’s post-mastectomy image of himself. Or it’ll be yet another coming-out story.
In Hoogenkamp’s own words, darkness became his ally. Interestingly, it is when it is pitch dark that even a quantum of light can offer some illumination and hope. It is a metaphorical way of saying that through conversations with his father, Hoogenkamp began to process his origin story. During one such candid conversation, Hoogenkamp’s father happens to open up about his wife’s past, which helps the author see an anti-path taking shape.
Determined to not tread it, to not live a life that wasn’t true to himself—that seemed like a lie—Hoogenkamp begins to build the version of himself that wasn’t anything like a man or a woman but that which was “anti” to both. It bears submitting that Hoogenkamp, in the context of the operation, notes that he hates dying. However, to become an ‘antiboy’ or a nonbinary person is actually a rebirth of sorts. Death plays a crucial role in this process, for unmaking is necessary not only for gaining selfhood but for changing societal perceptions too.