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This article focuses on Jeffrey Eugenides' (2002) novel Middlesex and the author's representation of bodies as visual and material texts. I illustrate how ethnic bodies are ideologically constructed and 'Americanized' to fit national and hegemonic standards of belonging, and I argue that the protagonist's (Cal/-liope's) body complicates and explodes such rubrics of classification. The project of identity-making and historical recovery in Middlesex is explored psychically and corporeally. Engaging with Michel Foucault's notions of history, I suggest that Middlesex moves through tumultuous historical moments and identifies what might be thought of as convulsions in the seemingly serene and relaxed musculature of the historical body – always with a focus on the materiality and corporeality of the protagonist, Cal/-liope and his/her hermaphroditic subjectivity. It is this focus on the material that makes Middlesex unique and, I argue, imperative to our current understanding of American 'ethnic' literatures. Using Kaja Silverman to think about visuality and the gaze as interpolated by Cal, this article suggests that the filmic aspects of Middlesex beckon a visual analysis that will question how bodies are read. Using Judith Butler's notions of bodily impenetrability and Elizabeth Grosz's configuration of the body as material matter, I aver that Middlesex leads its audience to deconstruct and reconsider the ways in which ethnic American identity operates in a globalized and hybridized US landscape.

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