Transgender and the Literary Imagination: Changing Gender in Twentieth-Century Writing

Abstract

Drawing on the insights of leading scholars in the field of transgender studies, the Introduction provides extended consideration of critical and cultural frameworks essential for the project of rereading representations of transgender in twentieth-century literary fiction, including: transgender historiography; feminism and queer theory; LGBT activism and identity politics. More specifically, it examines the following topics: questions of historical representation in relation to historical fiction; the influence of genres of transgender life writing, including memoir and biography; the legacies of Second Wave feminist critiques of transsexuals; the impact of narratives of gender crossing on the interpretation of transgender lives; the relationship between transsexual narratives and intersex bodies; the role of colonial contexts and discourses of ‘race’ in the construction of gender normativity. It concludes with an overview of the book structure, providing summaries of each chapter.

Crossing the Borders of Queer TV: Depictions of migration and (im)mobility in contemporary LGBTQ television

“…Through bringing these issues together, Transparent ’s depiction of Ari’s journey towards identifying as gender non-binary echoes frequent rhetorical motifs which depict transgender identity as a crossing of borders. As Rachel Carroll argues, ‘the motif of border crossing is a longstanding one in transgender studies’ (2018: 26), with other authors also noting as the prevalence of geographical metaphors for transition (Aizura, 2012; Carroll, 2018; Prosser, 1998; Halberstam, 1998). For Jay Prosser, for example, ‘transexuality’ can be seen ‘as a passage through space, a journey from one location to another’ (1998: 5), while Jack Halberstam notes ‘myths of travel and border crossings [as] inevitable within a discourse of transsexuality’ (1998: 165).…”

“…Differently put, the show’s portrayal of Palestinian people and lands as a place of self-discovery for Ari ignores the very real consequences of settlements and the Israeli occupation on those who do not, as Ari has, have the privilege of crossing borders at will. As has been pointed out by several theorists (Aizura, 2012; Carroll, 2018) with respect to transgender theory, the focus on borders as metaphor leaves unexamined the very real consequences of actual borders. Aren Aizura writes of how ‘trans theory has examined those figural “borders” regulating traffic between genders rather than watching what happens to gender-variant people at real borders, appropriating the metaphor of the immigrant “without land or nation” to understand transgender experience without considering that many trans people are, in fact, immigrants’ (2012: 135).…”

Making whiteness visible: transgender, race and the paradoxes of in/visibility inOrlando(1928),The Passion of New Eve(1977) andSacred Country(1992)

“…In this context, the analysis which follows seeks to demonstrate how the presence of (white) transgender characters in literary fiction across the twentieth century has served to "racialize others" (Stryker 2009, 82); by 'making whiteness visible', this essay aims to draw 2 Tremain's novel is one of a number of literary fictions of the 1990s to begin to give representation to transgender identity within literary conventions of realism, including biographical fictions such as Jackie Kay's Trumpet (1998), inspired by the life of American jazz musician and bandleader Billy Tipton , Patricia Duncker's James Miranda Barry (1999), a fictionalised version of the life of the eponymous colonial military surgeon (c. 1799-1865), and David Ebershoff's The Danish Girl (2000), an imaginative retelling of the life of Lili Elbe . See Carroll (2019). attention to the politics of in/visibility in relation to race and gender and its implications for transgender visibility in cultural representation.…”

“…For a fuller discussion of the relationship between women's writing, Second Wave feminism and transgender motifs in literary fiction, seeCarroll (2019).…”