Becoming-Animal in Stephany Méndez Perico's "Rat Queen"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24029/lejana.2026.19.11427Keywords:
animality, transformation, horror, identity, Colombian literatureAbstract
This essay analyzes Stephany Méndez Perico’s short story “Rat Queen” (2024) from the perspective of the notion of becoming-animal proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, identifying in the repulsion of its protagonist towards rodents a bond that will be transformed throughout the text and that allows to develop a critical reading of marginality. The aim of this proposal is to relate migration to a process of transformation close to metamorphosis, associating hostility towards certain human groups with the one addressed to animal species considered harmful, and connecting disgust with a fear of recognition. In the relationship that the character establishes with rats, this study finds a contact with the animal that goes beyond domesticity and reaches otherness.
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