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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by WestminsterResearch WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/westminsterresearch Marginal bodies: actualising trans Utopias Caterina Nirta Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © The Author, 2014. This is an exact reproduction of the paper copy held by the University of Westminster library. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: (http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] Marginal Bodies: Actualising Trans Utopias Caterina Nirta A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2014 ABSTRACT This PhD focuses on transgender subjectivity and explores the ways in which trans is negotiated and compromised by and within social space, with particular attention to the dynamics and socio-cultural norms through which the transgendered body that identifies beyond the gender binary is mediated. The existence of trans subjectivity develops in opposition to institutionalised heteronormativity; its problematic social location and identification make it a phenomenon which strongly relies on movement and spatiality. Part of what makes trans so compelling is not so much its breach of the ‘natural body’, but it is the unique form of self-description it carries within itself which retains the potential of opening up a new narrative and alternative possibility for the very notion of gender and for all LGBT advocacy and its relations to space. My theoretical framework is influenced by the work of Gilles Deleuze. I look at trans as a mode of unified affirmation and not as a product of negotiation (medical and/or legal). Difference for Deleuze is not an empirical condition but an ontological constitutional principle. Through this, I elaborate a conceptual framework of understanding wherein transgender subjectivity is articulated in terms of utopianism. The utopianism I refer to is not wishful hope, rather, it is the material embodiment here and now of that mode of futurity transgender subjectivity evokes. Futurity contains within itself the seed for producing the re- energisation of thought and ‘ethical space’ does not only entail the inclusion of what is real and tangible but must also account for what is possible, because what is possible is real. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgements v Declaration vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 - How Might It Be? 31 1.1 Why Deleuze? 34 1.2 Why Video Diaries? 48 1.3 Why This Research? 61 Chapter 2 - Actualised Utopias 63 2.1 Utopia of the ‘Not-Yet’ 67 2.2 No Future, No Present 73 2.3 Temporal Immanence 79 2.4 Future in the Present 85 2.5 Sustainable Utopian Ethics 91 Chapter 3 – Logics of Recognition 96 3.1 Gender Recognition Act 2004 100 3.2 Shift Gender/Sex 102 3.3 Until Death Do Us Part 104 3.4 Dialectics of Recognition 109 3.5 Limits of Recognition 114 iii 3.6 Intersectionality 118 3.7 Will to Be Imperceptible 123 The Diary Sessions, I - On Gender Recognition 134 Chapter 4 – Spatial Dystopia. Or a Case Against Public Toilets 148 4.1 The Monolingualism of Public Toilets 150 4.2 The Making of Public Toilets 157 4.3 The Un-Making of Public Toilets 161 4.4 An Ethics for Public Toilets 171 The Diary Sessions, II – On Public Toilets 179 Chapter 5 – Marginal Bodies 192 5.1 The Monstrous Body 198 5.2 The Othered Body 204 5.3 Different Bodies 214 5.4 Perverse Bodies 220 5.5 Nomadic Bodies 230 The Diary Sessions, III - On Wrong Bodies 234 Conclusion 246 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Andreas Philippopolou-Mihalopoulos for his guidance, encouragement and generous support during and beyond my time at the University of Westminster. A very special thank you to my second supervisor, Dr Oliver Phillips, for his assistance and insightful comments. Special thanks also to Andrea Pavoni and Danilo Mandic for their inspiring company and the time together. Thank you to Tommy Hafer for his encouragement and stimulating feedback, thank you to C.3.3. and to Lux Isolato, Jess Farnham, Stevil Frank, Harry Dodd and Kyle Stew for their friendship and support. Finally, I would like to say thank you to my family, Mum, Dad, Terry and Billy, to whom this PhD is dedicated. DECLARATION This thesis is submitted to the Westminster Law School, University of Westminster, in partial fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I declare that all the material contained in this thesis is my own work. Date ___________________________ Signed __________________________ ii A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. (Oscar Wilde) It is not the elements or the sets which define the multiplicity. What defines it is the AND, as something which has its place between the elements or between the sets. AND, AND, AND – stammering. (Gilles Deleuze) iii Introduction “The aim is not to rediscover the eternal or the universal, but to find the conditions under which something new is produced (creativeness)”1. Studies on the transgendered body, on trans identity, on being queer have been present as academic disciplines for decades. Trans communities have been expanding in several sectors of society and have gradually found ways to gain a wider degree of socio-political and cultural recognition due to both growing academic interest and to the increasing number of media representations that have without a doubt contributed to making trans subjectivity not only more accessible, but they have also helped, if only partially, relocate trans outside of that paradigm of mental health and sexual deviancy it was for so long associated with not only culturally, but also within specialised academic studies.2 Even though trans identities and ways of identifying with trans are generally more available, being trans remains a highly controversial position to find oneself in at various degrees pretty much anywhere in the world: not only does it come with various forms of social, cultural and political discriminations leading sometimes to more severe forms of violence, but it presents the individual with an ongoing set of challenges and compromises. On the one hand the urge to belong to the gender of choice, which often leads up to body alterations, on the other hand, the all too complex issue of transferring one’s individuality onto a category, that of trans, which comes with assumptions and 1 Gilles Deleuze, Claire Parnet, Dialogues, Trans. by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987) p. Vvii 2 See Susan Stryker’s account of CLAGS, 1995 in The Transgender Reader (Taylor & Francis, 2006) 1 implications that see trans always in the same fashion of body-mind misalignment, wrong body, perversion and psychiatric disorder. These identifications, supported and reinforced by cultural norms, produce normative models that re-direct the self in certain direction and stimulate one’s identity accordingly3. The increase of the multi-gendered and multi- sexed societies of today, then, call for a new inclusive evaluation of gender that accounts for the ever-evolving possibilities of subjectivity. However, the institutionalisation of the term transgender as an ‘umbrella term’4 to encapsulate all forms of gender understandings that differ from what is thought to be gender norm and the inclusivity it calls for, have perhaps in some ways ceased to account for the specificity of the singular, thus offering a unifying vision of transgender as an associate of that category allowing generalising assumptions about trans individuals. Early studies of transgenderism describe trans individuals as “miserable souls” that “plough their lonely and unhappy run path through life”.5 In both theoretical and medical literature trans identity has been framed within a paradigm made of minority stress6, sense of awkwardness or discomfort, 7 3 Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) 4 The term ‘transgender’ first came into use in the mid-nineties and encompasses a variety of gender identifications: not just the small percentage that seeks gender reassignment (See: Femke Olysager and Lynn Coway, ‘On the Calculation of the Prelevance of Transsexualism’, presented at the WPATH 20th International Symposium, Chicago, Illinois, September 6, 2007), but also those who only partially seek bodily manipulation, i.e. take hormones, or simply identify with the opposite gender. 5 John Hoenig, 'Etiology of transsexualism' in Betty W. Steiner (Ed.) Gender Dysphoria: Development,