Space, Place, and Identity in Shani Mootoo, Eli Clare, and D’Lo’s work
03/29/18 Shani Mootoo’s “Out on Main Street”
Eli Clare’s “The Mountain”
D’Lo’s poetry and poetics statement
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Discussion Questions
Sara Ahmed and Bo Luengsuraswat 03/27/18
Pick one creative text that we have read so far (Zami, Trumpet, Bodhran and Salah's Poetry, Owomoyela's short story), and read it through the lens of one of the theoretical readings we have encountered. I encourage you to pick a passage or two from the creative text, and close-read it through the lens of a theoretical piece. For example, you can read Bodhran's "Cycle Undone" alongside Snorton and Haritaworn's notion of trans necropolitics. Or you can read a passage from Zami through Munoz's theory of disidentifications, showing how Lorde disidentifies with the dominant (white) gay and lesbian culture around her. Or you can read a passage in Trumpet about the funeral director through the lens of Dean Spade's arguments about how gender is administered. Some theoretical readings (like Butler's) can be applied to most texts. You can also put the creative text in dialogue with a theoretical piece (for example, you can argue that Owomoyela's story complicates or problematizes Butler's theory of gender performativity).
Your essay needs to have a thesis statement. Your thesis will be about your argument about your chosen creative text, using ideas from a theoretical text. There should a close engagement with the texts you choose, with frequent textual evidence for your claims and sub-claims. The paper should be 3-4 pages long. Part I
1) We have talked in class about the surveillance that trans people experience from the medical industry and the state. This surveillance usually performs a forced stripping of the body, an act that can allow cis people to consume and make sense of trans bodies. The novel opens with Millie being surveilled by reporters. How does the cisgaze of journalists surveil Millie in the opening? How does Doctor Krishnamurty surveil Joss? How does Kay show Millie surveilling Joss through her remembrance of him? How are we as readers kept from surveilling his body or at times, encouraged to surveill Joss? Pay attention to how Joss’ identity is slowly revealed through different perspectives. 2) Thinking back to Snorton and Haritaworn’s idea of the afterlife, why do you think Kay presents Joss only in death? How do Millie and Colman regulate his afterlife? How do the journalists or the registrar regulate Joss’ afterlife in this world? Why do you think Kay made the choice to present his story through the perspectives of others, and never through his own voice? 3) Time is important to the form and content of this novel. For example, as Millie grieves, she reflects that the “only thing that feels authentic to me in my past” (37), and Joss distances himself from his past, referring to his past self only in third person. What is the significance of remembering the past in this novel? 4) Joss’ bandages appear again and again in the novel. We encounter them first through the perspective of Millie, and then through the perspective of the doctor. How are they presented during these two instances? Why are they such an important trope to this novel? Part II 1) Throughout the novel, certain characters are shocked/surprised by Joss’ body [“But today something did shock Albert Holding. Today, Albert Holding did gasp” (108)]. Others, like Sophie Stones, urge people to display shock and disbelief for the purposes of journalistic sensationalism. Why does the novel emphasize the affective power of shock again and again? What do you make of Stones’ obsession with the shock of the news? What does this emphasis on affective gasps do for the reader? 2) In the chapter on the funeral director, Kay describes Joss’ naked body intimately for the first time: “He started to get the body ready for the embalmer… the first thing he noticed was that the man’s legs were not hairy. Then Holding noticed that he had rather a lot of pubic hair. A bush. The absence of a penis did not strike him straight away...When he did notice after a few moments that there was no visible penis, he actually found himself rummaging in the pubic hair just to check that there wasn’t a very, very small one hiding somewhere” (109). Even though this chapter is narrated through the voice of an omniscient narrator, the invasive curiosity here reflects Holding’s interiority. It does not seem to be an “objective” narratorial voice. How can we as readers prevent ourselves from voyeuristically gazing upon Joss’ body? What kind of ethical reading practice can we enact as we read descriptions of Joss’ body? 3) What is the value and purpose of clothes in this novel? Think about Joss’ suits, how he is stripped, and his body “transforms” (110) for Holding when his clothes are taken off. 4) The chapters that depict Sophie Stones’ interiority and intentions highlight the violence that goes into producing “tantalizing” trans narratives. Why do you think Kay inserts this metacommentary on trans narratives inside her own novel, which is also about a trans person? What is the purpose of the internal critique of Stones’ biography of Joss? Millie also meditates on how a “story with a price tag” can never be true (154). What does this reflection suggest about linear trans life-narratives (autobiographies and biographies)? 5) What is the importance of music to race, gender, and identity in this novel? Why is jazz so important to Kay’s black scottish re-writing of Billy Tiption’s story? How does musical performance intersect with gender performance/presentation in the novel? Snorton and Haritaworn: Trans Necropolitics
“...trans women of color act as resources-- both literally and metaphorically-- for the articulation and visibility of a more privileged transgender subject” (71). Key terms: Necropolitics (Achille Mbembe) Biopolitics (Foucault) Homonationalism (Jasbir Puar) Homonormativity (Lisa Duggan) Visibility politics Transnormativity Methodology: Examination of the “discursive and representational politics of trans death and trans vitality” (66) through a “transnational and intersectional” lens (67). Discussion questions: 1) Snorton and Haritaworn are working through a transfeminist lens. When they argue that “dominant trans subjects are rarely held accountable and remain awkwardly frozen in positions of analogy and equivalency with other “diversely diverse” locations” (74), how are they urging us to consider a feminism that is not only “inclusive” of trans women, but thought through the experiences of trans feminine people? How are trans women and trans femme/ feminine people “frozen in positions of analogy” in social justice movements that we see around us? 2) Discussing trans and queer complicities, Snorton and Haritaworn “resist the easy ascription of these complicities to neoliberalism.” Rather, they argue that “the homonormative narrative of the creative-class member, who ventures into hitherto ungentrifiable territory and performs himself as a productive citizen and consumer in contrast to those whose unproductiveness and excessive reproductiveness mark their intimacies as disposable in the current diversity regime, is sprouting transgressive offshoots that equally need addressing” (73). On the next page, they contend, “like many of its globalizing predecessors, the Berlin TDOR thus incited a trans community into life whose vitality depends upon the ghosting of poor trans people, trans people of color, and trans people in the Global South” (74). How are certain trans people in the contemporary moment being “ghosted” as others get celebrated for their “colorful difference”? How can we apply this framework to the production of trans celebrities, particularly trans of color celebrities? How can we analyze contemporary trans politics as they produce certain “good” victims, while also replicating the idea of racialized trans monstrosity? Ahimsa Timoteo Bhodran and Trish Salah’s poetry:
Pick one reading from the second module on Trans Life/Death. This can be a theoretical or creative piece. Write about how this reading helped you re-imagine or re-conceptualize a personal/social/political issue that you encounter or witness in your life. For example, you may write about how Snorton and Haritaworn's piece allows you to critique or examine #TransTerps. Or you could write about how Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran's poetry allows you to think through your own trans being/becoming/coming-of-age. Or you could write about an everyday conversation you may have witnessed recently about trans rights or hate crime laws that you want to explore through the lens of Dean Spade's arguments.
This journal entry does not have to be personal, although you are welcome to explore personal questions/issues/experiences. Please pay attention to grammar and punctuation. Proofread your work before submitting. The assignment should be 1- 2 pages long. “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility” by Toby Beauchamp
“Which bodies can choose visibility and which bodies are always already visible -- perhaps even hyper-visible -- to state institutions? For whom is visibility an available political strategy, and at what cost? … Which bodies would be read under the DHS Advisory’s warning as gender deviant, dangerous or deceptive even if they did produce paperwork documenting their transgender status?” (363) “The concept of safety thus shifts: rather than protecting trans people from state violence, the organizations now focus on protecting the nation from the threatening figure of the terrorist, a figure that transgender travelers must distinguish themselves from by demonstrating their complicity in personal disclosure. Creating the figure of the safe transgender traveler necessarily entails creating and maintaining the figure of the potential terrorist, and vice versa. Because some bodies are already marked as national threats, the ability to embody the safe trans traveler is not only limited to particular bodies, but in fact requires the scapegoating of other bodies.” (364)
“Three Points Masculine” by An Owomoyela “John was in Isaac’s group. She didn’t look at me when we rounded our eight up, and I mostly ignored her. We just got in line and marched into the evacuation zone. I did notice she didn’t walk like a girl learned to, didn’t hold herself like a girl learned to. She might’ve had the GAT, but she was off.” “Given the way the rev had been going after her—well, I know how these things go. Gender assessment gets people angry, anger gets people nasty. That’s why most of us keep our dirty little secrets under our belts and our vests. Why most of us don’t go wearing a damn beard [...] “Why didn’t you just wear the goddamn dress?” I twisted around and punched him.”
Please find the slides from class attached here:
Close Reading Paper:
Length: 2-3 pages, (typed, double-spaced in Times New Roman 12 with 1” margins). Due Date: Feb 23rd Grading: 10% of final grade Pick one or two passages from Zami, and examine these passages for the literary techniques used to convey meaning. Pay attention to imagery, metaphor, symbolism, genre-blending, references, connections with other parts of the text, syntax, diction, structure etc. Identify what Lorde is doing with language in relation to her key ideas, how she is using literary strategies to craft her biomythography, and why she makes she makes these choices. Your paper does not need to have an introduction or conclusion, but you do need to have a thesis statement about your reading of the passage. Remember that there is no one right way to read a passage. Discussion Questions:
1) In “Uses of the Erotic,” Lorde argues that “we are taught to separate the erotic demand from most vital areas of our lives other than sex.” Consider the parts of the text where the erotic emerges (especially the parts that not explicitly about sex). How do you read these parts in the light of “Uses of the Erotic”? Passage to consider: “All these transported me into a world of scent and rhythm and movement and sound that grew more and more exciting as the ingredient liquefied” (74)/ “My body felt new and special and unfamiliar and suspect all at the same time… I smelled the delicate breadfruit smell rising up from the front of my print blouse that my own womansmell, warm, shameful, but secretly utterly delicious” (77)/ “The whole rhythm of movements softened and elongated, until, dreamlike, I stood, one hand tightly curved around…” (79) 2) The home space is very important to queer cultural productions. In many queer narratives, the home is not only the site of familial trauma, or a place that needs to be escaped, but is also reclaimed as a site for community-building and chosen family. What is the function of home (in all its various meanings) in Zami? (e.g. 71, 104, 139, 150) 3) As Audre explores her sexuality, she also finds herself examining what it means to enact and perform a gay/lesbian/woman-loving identity. How does she use relationships and cultural narrative/language to understand her own identity? How do other women’s perceptions of her impact her embodiment? 4) This is not only a lesbian feminist coming-of-age narrative, but also a narrative about Lorde’s coming-of-age as a writer and poet. How do Lorde’s childhood experiences with silence inform her development as a lesbian poet? 5) What is the function of geographical place in Lorde’s biomythography? How does she experience herself differently when she moves to Mexico? Passages to consider: “It was in Mexico City those first few weeks that I started to break my life-long habit of looking down at my feet at I walked along the street. There was always so much to see…” (156)/ “It was in Mexico that I stopped feeling invisible…” (173). 6) The idea of self-preservation comes up a lot (e.g. 107, 111, 153). Why is it important to Lorde’s narrative? |
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