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22 - Ontological Sex-Genders

from Part Five - Recursivities and Futures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2023

Cecilia McCallum
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil
Silvia Posocco
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Martin Fotta
Affiliation:
Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences
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Summary

This chapter aims to trace some of the relations between anthropology and trans studies around the definition of the category “transgender.” Doubling as a category of analysis and a lived experience, the transgender category opens up long-standing conceptual, critical, and methodological tensions between trans studies and anthropology, producing aligned and yet divergent understandings of gender, representation, identity, and cultural production. Yet drawing on the connections between these disciplines, the chapter also describes how, through ethnography, both are becoming increasingly proximate, particularly as transitioning comes to be understood to fundamentally challenge deterministic models of gender experience.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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