The opening abstract of Volker Woltersdorff’s article “Paradoxes of Precarious Sexualities” summarizes his considerations of neo-sexualities, a concept developed by Volkmar Sigusch, as relating in part to “the provision of care giving, sustainability of commitments, and loss of autonomy” (164). An approach to Helene Hegemann’s novel Axolotl Roadkill with these three domains in mind yields many opportunities to question concepts of sexuality and gender identity. Moreover, the novel provides ample evidence of the precarity claimed by Woltersdorff, and which is a prerequisite for “queer movements that contest both heteronormativity and neo-liberalism” (165).

Woltersdorff begins his exploration of precarity with Judith Butler’s ideas of instances of instability as sources of pleasure (qtd. in Woltersdorff: 167). He suggests that stability, too, can provide both pleasure and discomfort necessary for eroticism to emerge, and goes on to question exactly where stability and instability might clash. In Hegemann’s novel, it is the protagonist, Mifti, who embodies this interplay. Her reliability as a narrator is at best suspect and at worst non-existent. Clouded by copious drug use, hallucinations, and blackouts bordering on fugue states, her recounting of events produces a jarring experience for the reader. However, between her ramblings and non sequiturs, Mifti manages at times to relate a coherent story. As such, the reader, along with Mifti’s conversation partners are left to question concepts of authority and authenticity.

Sexuality and gender identity are also called into question throughout the novel. In fact, for the first several pages, it is unclear whether the narrator is male or female. An exchange with a “heterosexual female communication designer in blue and grey striped cardigan” (5) clearly identifies one interlocutor, but not the other. A certain maleness is suggested by the fact that Mifti needs help with shopping and food preparation, stereotypically women’s duties, as further evidenced by the communication designer’s assumption that the mother initiated the errand.

The later revelation that Mifti is biologically female does little to straighten out, so to speak, the issue of sexuality. One of Mifti’s first explicitly mentioned sexual encounters involves her friend Ophelia. The two are watching television and discussing scenes they find arousing and end up kissing. As Ophelia describes the situation, “[w]e’re both so gender-confused, honey” (38). Smoothio, a fling of Mifti’s bisexual (gay?) brother questions her orientation directly. Her reply—“I hardly jumped for joy when I found out about it, but yeah, I’m as bi as they come as well”—is not exactly a declaration of pride or conscious branding (130).

Mifti describes sexual relations with several men, too, but always with a sense of detachment or disengagement on her part. With the taxi driver, Pörskin, and the psychoanalyst, she seems to come to midway through the act itself, as if unsure how it began. I believe that Woltersdorff’s ideas of sustainability of commitments and loss of autonomy are important here. Mifti describes early on the conflict she faces in fighting or giving in to her desires. “Doing what I want is dangerous because it really makes me vulnerable. Not doing it is not an option” (15). Here we see the stability versus instability, with the latter seeming to win out. She later states that “[s]ex is always an act of violence anyway” (52), though none of the trysts seem to fall into the category of rape. Indeed, on two occasions she claims rape (172) or offers to (113) as a means of diminishing personal accountability for her own actions. In some way, though, she does seem not to be in control of her own actions, and while drugs are a likely cause, the loss of autonomy is undeniable.

With the psychoanalyst—and eventually Ophelia—sustainability of commitments is the issue. Mifti has trouble maintaining the status of her relationships with these two people. The psychoanalyst states quite clearly that he is not interested in sex (169), and genuinely seems to want to care for an incapacitated and weakened Mifti, but not ten pages later, the relationship takes a carnal turn. With Ophelia, it is an established friendship that withers in the end. Here, the difference in age and functionality again hint at a caregiver relationship somehow complicated by unclear boundaries. A similar disconnect between care giver and charge occurs within Mifti’s immediate family, too. An abusive, mentally ill mother; an affluent but absent father; and older siblings who practice the same drug-filled lifestyle leave her with no adult figures to whom she might turn for guidance. In the end, Mifti seeks to fill that gap in the figure of Alice, a woman who also represents Mifti’s greatest lost love.

The precarity of sexuality and gender identity is illustrated in Axolotl Roadkill in the model of instability argued by Volker Woltersdorff. In Mifti, the reader encounters a teenage girl facing insecurities brought about by drug use and dysfunctional relationships with family and friends. In the wake if these insecurities, Mifti is left to chart her own course and define her own identities as daughter, sister, and lover.