The Media, Arts and Humanities Research Institute
The Media, Arts and Humanities Research Institute is the collaborative hub of research in Media, Arts and Humanities at Sussex. It draws on the Sussex traditions of radicalism and innovation to support our research and creative practice from across the Faculty.
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‘Hear My Tale’: Transgender Rage and the Reality of Gender Trouble
This presentation, taken from Love’s forthcoming book, *To Be Real: The Uses of the Personal in Queer Criticism*, examines Susan Stryker’s use of the personal voice and her relation to the field of queer studies in her 1994 essay “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” In the essay, Stryker occupies instead a queer position —unassimilable, antagonistic— in relation to the human community. But if her relation to humanity at large is proudly defiant, her position vis-a-vis queer community is more vexed. Like other queers, Stryker embraces her difference, raging against the normal and the natural. Yet even as she stakes out a queer position, Stryker suggests the limits of “queer” to account for her situation. While her transsexual embodiment puts her at permanent odds with nature, Stryker adds that it is in nature that she must nonetheless exist. Although she fully embraces the queer critique of essentialism, she stipulates that to be wholly against nature is to cede the ground of existence. Centering her body and her emotions, Stryker demands that the anti-foundationalist field of queer theory recognize her in the fullness of her being. Hear my tale, she commands: commiserate me, and dare to know what gender trouble truly is.
Banner image: Reflections on a meeting by Scribe is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
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Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities Research Office, Silverstone SB220