Spiegelzaal. Soironbuilding, 1003
Eliza Steinbock, L&K/CGD : Structures of Transgendered Feeling: Articulating the Felt Body in Contemporary Law, Science, and the Arts
Discussant: Maaike Meijer
Summary of VENI research proposal
Contemporary legal and scientific discourses on the gendered body emphasize “feelings” as a source of truth. I take transgender and transsexual (trans) individuals, who express a gender identity incongruent to their sexed embodiment, as a privileged point of entry to the “new gender politics” (Butler 2004). Trans bodies face most acutely the demand to articulate gendered feelings to state officials, to medical experts, and to intimates and strangers.
Campaigns for respectful state recognition of one’s felt gender identity have been successful in various countries. Some scientific community members have endorsed access, without diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” to treatments (hormones, surgeries). Yet, disgust at gender variance has led to widespread social discrimination and hate crimes against trans people. The paradox of increasing self-determination on the one hand, and increasing social enforcement on the other hand, creates a highly-charged affective atmosphere around transgendered feelings.
Approaches to new conceptualizations of the gendered body have mainly been situated within philosophy, legal theory, or science studies; hence, lacking full consideration of the affective dimension. Given the predominance of feelings, I situate art works as a strategic, inherently multidisciplinary research site. Art can articulate the feelings of emergent, lived social experiences that cannot be reduced to laws or diagnoses. I employ discourse and visual analysis methods to distill what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” embodied in art works. I specifically close read for legal and scientific discursive structures that bear on the articulation of feeling transgendered. The goal of this study is to produce a set of representative case studies analyzing art works that profile the cultural context of transgendered feelings.
In analyzing the aesthetic and affective material of contemporary trans cultures, I show how art provides an arena for society to act out and potentially transform the ambivalent relations between hate/respect, shame/curiosity, and disgust/compassion.
