What question did this study set out to answer?

To examine how Kim de l'Horizon’s novel Blutbuch contributes to the epistemology of gender and critiques traditional approaches.

June 3, 2026Open Access

Knowing Gender in Kim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch

Key Points

To examine how Kim de l'Horizon’s novel Blutbuch contributes to the epistemology of gender and critiques traditional approaches.
Literary analysis of Kim de l'Horizon’s novel Blutbuch (2022)
Critique of existing gender theories regarding internality and externality
Exploration of gender as both an empty signifier and essential aspect of self
Bloobook challenges conventional understandings of gender identity
It emphasizes the contradiction of knowing gender while acknowledging its fluidity
The novel reveals the limitations of typical gender theories in grappling with identity

Abstract

This article reads Kim de l'Horizon's award-winning novel Blutbuch (2022) as a contribution to the epistemology of gender. Amid philosophical debates about internality and externality in the construction of gender, about the feasibility of gender identity as a coherent concept, about gender feels and gender as process, de l'Horizon's novel offers something else: it shows the foolishness of attempting an etiology of gender and the compulsion to attempt one anyway. Instead of setting the ultimate knowability of gender aside, the typical move of today's gender theory, Blutbuch dwells within this impasse. In the novel, I argue, gender appears simultaneously as an empty signifier and an essential aspect of the self.

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