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Chapter 2 - Gender and the Queer/Trans* Undercommons

By
Jack Halberstam
Edited by
Jude Browne
Jude Browne
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Gender is one of the many metrics by which bodies are measured in terms of the adherence to or departure from the norm. And trans* bodies have, in the past, offered a clear challenge to gender binarism on the one hand and the notion of a natural division between the two genders on the other. Careful attention to the disruption that trans* bodies sow in relation to social norms can change fundamentally the way we understand other seemingly stable oppositions such as legal and illegal, legible and illegible, known and unknowing and so on. This chapter refuses to resolve the confusion or bewilderment created by the spectacle or, as is often the case, the specter, of the trans* body. Instead, we follow disruption, disorder and bewilderment into new orientations to time, place, futurity and desire.

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Chapter
Information
Why Gender? , pp. 38 - 56
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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