(Un)containable Bodies: Experiments in Life-Writing and Form, post-1968
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Westminster
Department Name: Sch of Humanities
Abstract
In her seminal essay, 'My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix:
Performing Transgender Rage', Susan Stryker proclaims: 'I am a transsexual, and therefore I
am a monster.'1 What links transsexuality and monstrosity, according to Stryker, is the
condition of the unnatural; Stryker begins the essay by describing the transsexual body as a
'technological construction' and 'product of medical science', which is similar to
Frankenstein's monster insofar as transsexual and transgender individuals are 'often perceived
as less than fully human'.2 This is to say that transsexual and transgender bodies reside outside
the normative categories of gendered identity. Performative declarations made at the moment
of birth-'it's a girl!'-fail to constitute and sustain all forms of lived subjectivity; such
utterances cannot describe the temporal and spatial dynamics of a body that exists beside or
moves through binary classifications of gender. In other words, transsexual and transgender
bodies are unrepresentable in/through traditional linguistic codes: they exceed the bounds of
language as determined by the phallogocentric system of exchange, and so, like the monster,
are examples of uncontainable bodies. What happens when one exists at or beyond this
linguistic limit? When one is forced to encounter the boundaries of subjectivity and the
normative (or ordinary) operations of power?
Performing Transgender Rage', Susan Stryker proclaims: 'I am a transsexual, and therefore I
am a monster.'1 What links transsexuality and monstrosity, according to Stryker, is the
condition of the unnatural; Stryker begins the essay by describing the transsexual body as a
'technological construction' and 'product of medical science', which is similar to
Frankenstein's monster insofar as transsexual and transgender individuals are 'often perceived
as less than fully human'.2 This is to say that transsexual and transgender bodies reside outside
the normative categories of gendered identity. Performative declarations made at the moment
of birth-'it's a girl!'-fail to constitute and sustain all forms of lived subjectivity; such
utterances cannot describe the temporal and spatial dynamics of a body that exists beside or
moves through binary classifications of gender. In other words, transsexual and transgender
bodies are unrepresentable in/through traditional linguistic codes: they exceed the bounds of
language as determined by the phallogocentric system of exchange, and so, like the monster,
are examples of uncontainable bodies. What happens when one exists at or beyond this
linguistic limit? When one is forced to encounter the boundaries of subjectivity and the
normative (or ordinary) operations of power?
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Max Shirley (Student) |