Theories of Texts and Technology

HI, All,

I have attached my paper.  If anyone has any input, I would love to hear from you.  Dr. Scott, I have sent my paper as an attachment to your email.

Jen

Jennifer Wojton

Dr.  Scott

ENG 6810: Theories in Texts and Technology

28 April 2009

The Queerest of the Queer: A Rationale for the Proposal of a Queer Identities Machine

“Social change movements frequently tell the tale of their inception in such a way as to claim that they burst forth as a natural response to the evils of oppression. While such a strategy may enhance group solidarity, it is, without exception, a simplification of the actual social context in which movements exist.”

~ Amanda Udis-Kessler

I recently had the opportunity to present an hour long workshop on transgender issues at the Florida Collegiate Pride Conference (FCPC).  Since my colleague (and often writing partner) Dr. Libbie Searcy was also presenting, we talked quite a bit about what might be the most productive way to structure our workshops, and although her workshop focused on bisexuality and mine focused on transgender issues, we found that our topics shared some interesting similarities. Both Libbie and I were especially motivated by our connection to the LGBTQ cohort on our university’s campus and our perceived understanding of their sense of “community.”  We are both active members of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), and Libbie is the faculty advisor for the Delta Lamba Phi fraternity (a fraternity for “gay, bisexual, and progressive men”), which arose, in part, as a result of some students’ desire for a more authentic community—a true brotherhood—that these students felt was lacking within the GSA. The FCPC is almost exclusively attended by LGBTQ students (all of whom attend colleges and universities in Florida or Georgia), so we were aware of a specific audience when we were preparing our workshops. This audience, in my experience, tends have more reductive ideas about gender and sexual identity than are often held by members of more mature, socio-political activist groups, but this is exactly why we were so compelled to address the issue of marginalization within the LGBTQ community at this conference and with this particular audience. 

            As Libbie and I were talking, we realized not only that we shared similar goals but also that our topics had more in common than we expected; that is, we were both going to be presenting on the “queerest of the queer”—those groups (bisexual and trans people) within the LGBTQ community that seem to be less visible, less understood, and more marginalized than even lesbians and gays. This similarity led us to share with each other our perceptions about how and why the “B” and the “T” have come to seem politically and socially marginalized and misunderstood even within the socio-political community to which they ascribe to belong. We then agreed to brainstorm about strategies for conveying this notion to our audiences, getting audience members’ input, helping them to see the “how and why” of this marginalization, and perhaps even providing them with suggestions for creating a more inclusive, informed, and diverse LGBTQ community. With this goal in mind, in this paper, I will propose a potential participatory exhibit that should it come to fruition could help many different kinds of audiences consider the vast diversity and potential strength in the LGBTQ community. 

In preparation for my FCPC presentation, I gave a little talk at a GSA meeting (in order to entice people to attend the conference) at which I asked all those present (twenty-eight members and non-members) to write down and anonymously submit words or phrases that they associate with the word “transgender.”  The results indicated the kind of stigma and lack of understanding that I suspected would be an issue. Some students expressed discomfort at the idea that one would want to alter his or her body so drastically via sex reassignment surgery, to “have the chop” or to “trade in their natural sex.” Many people just described transgendered persons as “being trapped in the wrong body.” These ideas were as pervasive among the students as in our culture as a whole. This exercise helped to clarify the goals for my presentation, which became to broaden the way in which the transgender identity is perceived and to make a point of the ways in which transgendered people face some of the same issues in different ways than other identities that are part of the LGBTQ community. I addressed the issues of passing, coming out, discrimination, and violence. Through the lens of queer theory and representations of transgender experience in memoirs and documentaries, I wanted to motivate those students who attended my workshop to begin to think about how to strengthen the LGBTQ community and, consequently, enhance its socio-political agenda.  Though I cannot gauge how successful I might have been, I got a positive response from many students who attended, and we engaged in productive and candid conversation.  The experience of preparing for and presenting that workshop, as well as attending Libbie’s workshop, has inspired me to further interrogate the issues that inspired both of those workshops.

The most prominent issue is visibility. Since visibility is essential to socio-political action, contemporary queer theorists’ work and the consequential addition of the “Q” in LGBTQ is a clear attempt at valorizing alternative identities that do not fit into the other categories so neatly. However, “Queer” has not yet become a definable, politically viable term or, by extension, group. The “Q” does not have the socio-political agency or authority that has developed in relation to the “L,” “G,” “B,” and “T.” Although queer identity hasn’t yet contributed to the furthering of a queer politics, theoretical notions of queerness have the potential to eventually impact practical notions, which is exactly why queer theory will so inform my discussion of transgender and bisexual issues. 

Though one might consider transgendered people, especially compared to homosexual and bisexual people, to be distinctly visible based on their outward signifiers and the necessity for changing gender performance, this recognition of the “Other” does not necessarily create a potent political and social visibility. Judith Butler asserts that an individual must be able to be “intelligibly” interpreted by instantiated cultural norms in order to be “counted” as a legitimate subject, in order to claim a space both figuratively and literally in society at large as well as a space within his/her perceived community.  As Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, and Alluquere Rosanne Stone have all pointed out, the gendering of the body is the first step toward becoming, to use Stone’s term, “a fiduciary subject” or, to use Bultler’s term, “a body that matters.”  A box indicating the sex of a child must be checked before he or she can be inscribed in a system that depends on the gender binary for so much of its systemized classification.  That is why children with ambiguous genitalia are subject to emergency intervention to “fix” their ambiguity. People with ambiguous embodiments of gender are neither seen nor heard, but most often revised to fit into those binary categories.  Similarly, those adults with alternative gender identities have trouble finding an authentic voice in a system that denies the legitimacy of embodied ambiguity or fluidity related to sex/gender identity.  While the performance of sex reassignment surgeries may initially be perceived as a positive move toward accepting transgender status, it was actually “far more concerned with restabilizing the gender system” that seemed threatened by the emerging cultural and historical gender bending of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Stryker 93).  Susan Stryker, in her book, Transgender History, explains that “access to transsexual medical services thus became entangled with a socially conservative attempt to maintain traditional gender, in which changing sex was grudgingly permitted for the few of those seeking to do so, to the extent that the practice did not trouble the gender binary for the many” (94).  This conservatism poses challenges to authentic visibility for the unique transgendered individual.

For transgendered persons, visibility is an issue on three levels. One, the term “transgender” tends to be perceived by many people, both inside and outside of the queer community, as synonymous with “transsexual,” which is defined as someone who is vested in surgical body modification as well as living as that new gender.  Judith Halberstam explains that “while the transgender body has been theorized as an in-between body, and the place of the medical and scientific construction of gender, when it comes time to picture the transgender body in the flesh, it nearly always emerges as a transsexual body” (97), meaning both literally in artistic representation and figuratively in the collective imagination. Furthermore, transgender/transsexual is often reduced to being defined as one who is “trapped in the wrong body.”  This conflation is a problem because there are so many genres of transgendered persons.  As Stone explains,

neither the investigators nor the transsexuals have taken the step of problematizing “wrong body” as an adequate descriptive category. In fact “wrong body” has come, virtually by default, to define the syndrome.  It is quite understandable, I think, that a phrase whose lexicality suggests the phallocentric, binary character of gender differentiation should be examined with deepest suspicion. So long as we, whether academics, clinicians, or transsexuals, ontologize both sexuality and transsexuality in this way, we have foreclosed the possibility of analyzing desire and motivational complexity in a manner which adequately describes the multiple contradictions of individual lived experience. We need a deeper analytical language for transsexual theory, one which allows for the sorts of ambiguities and polyvocalities which have already so productively informed and enriched feminist theory. (231)

While Stone’s assertion has certainly had an impact on members of the academic community who are considering these “polyvocalities” in their scholarship, my experience at the FCPC and with the LGBTQ community suggests that many LGBTQ people seem to still hold onto reductive and limiting perceptions of the transgendered community. These assumptions complicate authentic transgender visibility, representation, and community. 

The second issue relating to visibility is that in order for transgendered people to unambiguously live as a gender other than the one that they originally lived—to “pass,” which is the goal of many transgendered people—they must revise their lives.  In order to “pass,” to be the gender they are now claiming as their own, they can never acknowledge their former gender. This goal of “passing” makes claiming a “trans” identity impossible.  This impossibility reduces or eliminates visibility and, consequently, agency in the public socio-political sphere. Furthermore, as Jamison Green’s Look! No, Don’t! explains, “Seeking acceptance within the system of ‘normal’ and denying our transgendered status is an acquiescence to the prevailing binary gender paradigm that will never let us fit in, and will never accept us as equal members of society. . . . We will always wear a scarlet T that marks us for treatment as a pretender, as other, as not normal, as trans” (507). Green, a female to male transman, suggests that there can be no “fitting in” for trans-identified people because the binary system of gender identity neither acknowledges the possibility that there can be gender ambiguity nor accepts transmen and transwomen as authentically male or female. This sentiment is echoed by Stone (a male to female transsexual) when she explains,

I could not ask a transsexual for anything more inconceivable than to forgo passing. . . . Still, transsexuals know that silence can be an extremely high price to pay for acceptance.  I ask all of us to use the strength which brought us through the effort of restructuring identity, and which has also helped us to live in silence and denial, for a re-visioning of our lives. . . . Although individual change is the foundation of all things, it is not the end of all things.  Perhaps it’s time to begin laying the groundwork for the next transformation. (231)

This hearkens to the need for a unified community that claims the term “transgendered” as a force to be reckoned with in the socio-political arena.  In other words, without this personal recognition and public profession, there can be no authentic inclusion in the LGBTQ community that further challenges a sense of communal agency in political and social spheres.   

Thirdly, visibility is made difficult in that another kind of “plausible history” is often invented by trans-persons seeking medical treatment.  The classification of transgendered as a pathology (Gender Identification Disorder) sets up standards for care and treatment.  These standards are enforced and adhered to by medical professionals who act as gatekeepers.  This affects visibility of the trans-community because in an “official” capacity, “on the record,” trans persons seeking medical treatment must represent themselves as perfect cases for medical attention—sometimes at the expense of the truth. To a great extent, this gate keeping and necessary lying has persisted since Harry Benjamin’s 1966 standard of choosing only surgical candidates who report having always felt as though they were “in the wrong bodies.”  The one standard of care that strikes me as most interesting is that a transgendered person who wants genital reconstructive surgery, which must be approved by a “gatekeeper,” must claim a lifelong alienation from his/her current genitalia.  He must deny penile pleasure, and she must deny vaginal pleasure.  Therefore, a trans person can only express disgust as when describing his/her response to sexual stimuli.  That certainly doesn’t seem a reasonable criterion, but it is the only one that the medical community can conceive of as a reason for genital reconstructive surgery because their perceptions of what constitutes gender is so blatantly tied to sexual identity when, in reality, the reasons for transition are as varied as the trans community itself.

Although some trans activists are working to revise the classification of transgendered as a pathology in order to empower trans people to make decisions about their bodies without adhering to such a strict medical codification that reduces them to “case studies,” many trans persons who are “in the trenches” are subverting the system, investigating the body of knowledge that exists in trans memoirs, blogs, and the relevant psychological/medical texts to create the plausible history that will get them the medical procedure that they want. Stone points out that “the reason that candidates’ behavioral profiles matched Benjamin’s so well was that the candidates, too, had read Benjamin’s book, which was passed from hand to hand within the transsexual community, and they were only too happy to supply the behavior that led to surgery,” consequently creating an inauthentic representation of transgendered experience (228). Furthermore, Jason Cromwell points out in Queering the Binaries that “many, if not all, practitioners will refuse to perform surgeries on anyone who does not declare a desire for all of the procedures” (514). This, again, disallows for an expression of gender/sex other than that which represents adherence to the binary rather than an expression of fluidity or ambiguity. Although many have interpreted the transgender identity as a way to reify that same gender binary that it claims to challenge because so many trans identified people perform the stereotypical gender roles, it has become apparent that this is not the rule of transgender experience. Listening to transpeople talk about their experiences and identities makes it clear that there also is room for those with alternative expressions of sexuality and ambiguous/fluid gender identifications.  Cromwell points out that

medico-psychological literature is inevitably presented with practitioner’s subjective perspective but is presented as objective, leaving false impressions of what transpeople were or could be or could want to be.  So long as medico-psychological practitioners control the discourses about transsubjectivities, and as long as transsexuals remain complicit, the binaries remain seemingly intact.  Once transpeople begin articulating their own transsubjectivities, however, new discourse, and thus the expansion of binaries, can begin. (519)

Transgender scholarship, representation, and social/political action are attempting to take this new discourse into account, in order to further strengthen LGBTQ community and sociopolitical activism.  

With a similar goal in mind at the FCPC, Libbie decided to ask her audience of fifty-two to begin by writing down a few words or phrases that come to mind when they hear the word “bisexual” as a way to begin an honest dialogue.  We had clear expectations about the results of this exercise, especially since I’d conducted a similar exercise in relation to transgenderism, and those results were even more dramatic than we had suspected.  Libbie encountered a preponderance of answers such as “greedy,” “confused,” “non-discriminatory,” and “experimenting.”  Keeping in mind that nearly all of the participants in this workshop identify as LGBTQ persons, I thought the results were particularly telling and supportive of our original hypothesis regarding the lack of understanding, even respect, for those who identify as bisexual. The fluidity of desire is troubling to many people in the same way that fluidity of gender is troubling for many people.

While the assumption that bisexuals are simply in denial about being gay (a faulty argument made also about transgendered people) or are merely experiencing a phase of experimentation is pervasive in both the straight and gay community, Libbie focused on (and, ultimately, argued for the recognition of) bisexuality as a real identity—a lived identity that deserves respect and recognition on its own terms, just like the transgender identity. Those people who genuinely identify as bisexual are marginalized by the gay/straight binary (not unlike the male/female binary)—the very binary that, of course, is rooted in heteronormativity. Nevertheless, bisexuals face as much stigma (and perhaps more) within the gay community than within the straight community. It is this claim (which was substantiated in Libbie’s workshop) that has led me to see the queer identities of bisexual and transgender as facing many of the same challenges in terms of claiming legitimacy and recognition within the framework of both the LGBTQ community and society as a whole.  Amanda Udis Kessler points out that bisexuals seem to throw a wrench in the primary mantra used by the gay community: sexuality is not a choice; since bisexuality is so often linked to choice-making, it, at first glance, seems to threaten that mantra. Udis-Kessler writes, “Community oriented individuals [both heterosexual and homosexual], protective of the essentialist view of sexuality that seems to give rhyme and reason to their communities, equate the fluidity and apparent choice-making of bisexuality with that of constructionism, and see only a threat to that which they hold dear” (81). However, this reductive view does not account for the fact that the fluidity of desire that equates to bisexuality is no more of a choice than is a desire (gay or straight) that reflects the traditional binary. Further complicating this issue is that, for bisexuals, the fluidity of their desire means that outward signifiers—the gender of a bisexual person’s current partner or lover(s)—also will likely differ at different points in their lives. A bisexual woman who is currently in a relationship with a man reads straight despite the fact that she remains queer. If that same woman were to become involved with a woman, then she suddenly reads as gay, which is also a misrepresentation of her true identity. I liken this to the way in which the creation of a plausible history inevitably affects trangender people’s ability to be recognized and to count or matter in a social and political sphere.  While some transgendered people create their own inauthentic histories, when interpreting bisexual identity, “plausible histories” and identifications are assumed by others.  We see the issue of Butler’s “cultural intelligibility” affecting the perception of what one may or may not be perceived to be in accordance with the prescribed “norms.”   

Like the term “transgender,” the term “bisexuality” runs the risk of serving as an umbrella for so many possible identities in that there are so many points on the spectrum, and where one fits on the spectrum is bound to never be a fixed point. Marjorie Garber discusses how the common claim that “everyone is bisexual,” which might appear to be an inclusive claim but is actually a reductive one, undermines efforts to create a socio-political movement: “Is bisexuality…a category so large that, like the proverbial large print letters on a map, is it really too big to read? If so, what does this say about identity politics and the politics of inclusion and recognition? How can we resist lapsing back into an undifferentiated ‘humanism’ that says ‘we’re all the same,’ while perpetuating differences in tolerance, visibility, and social acceptance that compel a sense of second-class citizenship?” (70). This trend of naïve inclusion, which has been criticized by many queer theorists who focus on bisexual identity, exists regarding transgender identity as well, as exemplified by Halberstam: “The breakdown of gender is in many ways . . . an endless project, and it is perhaps preferable therefore to acknowledge that gender is defined by transitivity, that sexuality manifests as multiple sexualities, and that therefore we are all transsexuals” (226). Again, what is intended to encourage acceptance serves instead as a threat to trans people whose identity and experiences are inevitably not that of those categorized as normative. If a sexual or gender group excessively broadens its boundaries, then it risks obliteration in that it is indistinguishable as a separate group; in this sense, sameness equals not equality but invisibility. Of course, invisibility is detrimental to any group striving for social and political recognition and viability. Bisexuality and transgenderism do both illustrate the failure of categories. While bisexuality has great potential to be the impetus for a reimagining of sexuality and desire in the broadest sense, transgenderism calls into question the gender binary itself, it is dangerous to suggest that these unique identities should—or even could—ever be absorbed by a category to which “everyone” belongs.

This leads me to the importance of authentic representation of non-normative expressions of both sexuality and gender.  In order for authenticity to be established, there needs to be a “witness” to these subjectivities, first to instantiate their existence and then to think about how the fact of these queer subjectivities affect and are affected by the dominant discourses that exist.  Donna Harraway in her book, Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan _Meets__Oncomouse, explores the concept of the “modest witness” as it was perceived in classical scientific studies, specifically as it was described by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer in Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (1985).  The classic modest witness “guarantees . . . the legitimate and authorized ventriloquist for the object world, adding nothing from his mere opinions, from his biasing embodiment” (24). Since there is no such thing as a disembodied truth or reality, certainly in politics and even in the hard sciences, as Haraway posits, we need to understand the position of the classic modern witness as a way to understand our past and make way for the future.  It seems that this concept of the modest witness, who is always a male of some social standing, informs us also of the way in which heteronormativity shapes our social and political consciousness by way of being the default, “culture of no culture” that Susan Traweek first describes and Haraway inscribes as part of her rhetoric.  This “culture of no culture” presupposes that the modest witness’ identity and consequently, his documentation of those events that he witnesses, magically transcends any subjectivity that might otherwise be present.  In this way, those whose voices are a privileged part of that “culture of no culture,” which presupposes heteronormative embodied maleness, are also those with socio-political power that is exercised over the marginalized identities in the LGBTQ community.  Lawmakers, politicians, and the scientific and medical communities all labor under the auspices of heteronormative, gendered instantiations of culture.  These assumptions affect public policy regarding such issues as cross-dressing, the use of public space (specifically bathrooms), surgical body modification, claims to medical insurance, claims of marriage, and parenthood.

What Haraway advocates is a re-visioning of the modest witness. She asserts that in order “to enable compelling belief and collective action,” we must find a new modest witness who “while eschewing the additive narcotic of transcendental foundations” like those that guarantee objective representation of a universal truth, must be “in the action, be finite and dirty, not transcendent and clean” (22, 36).  In other words, we need to see and hear the voices of those who lack recognition within the framework of traditional society if we want to have a better understanding of the way that the “real world” produces knowledge because “nothing comes without its world, so trying to know those worlds is crucial” (37).  In other words, acknowledging subjectivity is crucial when considering objectivity.

  Haraway’s ideas are rooted in Sandra Harding’s notions about “strong objectivity.” According to Gary Olsen and Elizabeth Hirsch, “Harding argues that objectivity is maximized not by excluding social factors from the production of knowledge—as Western scientific method has purported to do—but precisely by ‘starting’ the process of inquiry from an explicitly social location: the lived experience of those persons who have traditionally been excluded from knowledge production (for example, women)” (193).  Strong objectivity then presupposes a “witness” who documents his or her observations about the world through the lens of his or her own situated knowledge and who practices “critical reflexivity”—a witness who is aware of and attempts to make others aware of a distinctive subject position rather than claiming “transcendent” objectivity, which Haraway  calls a “godtrick” and relegates to the category of myth.  This new “critical reflexivity,” especially when espoused by a witness who identifies with a marginalized (sub)culture, makes room for new ways of producing and reconfiguring knowledge, which is what is necessary if we are to understand and account for the representation and rights of those groups that fall outside of the traditional “norms” that dictate the limits of a community’s and/or society’s perceptions.  Haraway creates a team of “figures” to “challenge the power of the commodified body to occupy the future” (78).  Her metaphorical figure, FemaleMan, exemplifies what might constitute a compelling modest witness for the future.  She sees this new modest witness as being “a tool for provoking a little technical and political intercourse . . . about what counts as nature, for whom, and at what cost” (75).  This sentiment is at the heart of the challenges that the bisexual and transgendered population face and that I have previously alluded to.  According to Stephen Whittle, in the Introduction to the Transgender Studies Reader,

Whilst we can determine that trans people have always exited (within understandings contingent on time, space and culture), this begs the question of whether trans is a natural or unnatural phenomenon. . . . Having a sex is apparently a prior determinant of being human, but as such it begs the meaning of what “human” is. One of the arguments made in legal trans theory is that etiology is always irrelevant to the claim of rights. Of course, it isn’t, because we do not afford rights to vegetable material, and we limit the rights of non-human animals.  It is in the claim to human rights that what is “human” becomes overriding. (xiii) 

1. My inspiration for this idea came from experience with the Human Race Machine and ideas presented by Mark Hansen in the book, Bodies in Code.  The Human Race Machine, according to the website, claims to be a “powerful, yet subtle diversity tool” used to promote “an entirely unique diversity experience” by providing “a new way to look at ourselves.”  The human race machine takes the participant’s picture and then morphs that image so that one is presented with an image of “oneself” as another race. (To view video, click http://www.wolfmanproductions.com/hrm_vid.htm) Again, according to the website, the value of the Human Race Machine is explained to be “subjective” and “not easily defined,” but positive nonetheless, as it tends to engender a reaction that helps participants to recognize that “somehow we are all connected in a fundamental way” and that participants are put in the position to wonder, “How I would be a different individual in each of these races.” 

What I propose is a Queer Identities Machine that focuses on particular contexts in which one must rely on situated knowledge to interpret one’s subjectivity, rather than on an image that lacks a real world context like the images presented in the Human Race Machine. Hansen’s treatment of the concept of what he calls “the imaging power of the organism” supports the idea that this “imaging” may be a powerful tool in getting some recognition for queer identitites.  Hansen posits,

To explain the fact that the child nevertheless does assimilate the visual image of her body to the interoceptive image of it and also, more generally, that she “comes to identify as bodies,” indeed as “animated ones” her body and the bodies of others, Merleau-Ponty invokes a certain commonality of experience that comes simply from the fact of embodiment: “If I am a consciousness turned toward things [it would be better to say a body turned towards things, MH], I can meet in things the actions of another and find in them  a meaning because they are themes of possible activity for my own body” (117). (54)

This idea that visual representation can provide the means for envisioning the possibility for personal experience supports the potential for a Queer Identities Machine that manipulates a mirror image of the self by putting it in the context of non-normative, “queer” experience. 

 

 

This Queer Identities Machine would take advantage of the same kind of technology as the Human Race Machine.  It could easily be as portable (the Human Race Machine is “shipped” to different locations), allowing it to become a traveling exhibition.  It could be brought to universities as a way to promote diversity awareness and to LGBTQ organizations as a way to broaden one’s perspective on “queer” subjectivities.  I envision three possible scenarios in which the machine could function, but the possibilities are limitless.

1) The first functions just like the Human Race Machine, but instead of morphing one’s mirror image to reflect features associated with another race, it would be able to morph features in such a way that the image would be masculinized or feminized to represent one’s opposite gender.  This would force participants to confront their reactions to these changes, which could even be recorded and played back for them.

2) The second scenario adheres to the idea of using the participant’s image but inserting that image into a “queer” subjectivity.  I envision a kind of digital scrapbook in which the life of an LGBTQ person could be represented, and the participant’s image could be inserted into the “scrapbook” as a way to help people recognize the legitimacy/authenticity of lived queer identities.

3) The third and most transgressive idea would be to have images of clothed bodies onto which the participant’s image could be transposed.  The participant could then click on clothes and accessories to remove them and reveal an inter-textual body, a body that could represent the possibility for ambiguous/fluid sex and gender identification.

 

 

My hope would be that this project might help to bring queer politics into the forefront—perhaps, to help do for LGBTQ activism what queer theory has done for scholarship. Investigating the implications of invoking this new technological modest witness would, at the least, be quite provocative and at best, might produce a new way to explore alternative subjectivity.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Cromwell, Jason. “Queering the Binaries: Transsituated Identities, Bodies, and Sexualities.” The

Transgender Studies Reader. Eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. New York:

Routledge, 2006. 509-20.

Garber, Marjorie. Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. Simon & Schuster,

1995.

Green, Jamison. “Look! No, Don’t! The Visibility Dilemma for Transsexual Men.” The

            Transgender Studies Reader. Eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. New York:

            Routledge, 2006. 499-508.

Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time & Place. New York: New York UP, 2005.

Hansen, Mark B. N. Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Haraway, Donna J. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse

™. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Hirsh, Elizabeth and Gary A. Olson. “Starting from Marginalized Lives: A Conversation with Sandra Harding.” A Journal of Composition Theory. 15.2 (1995): 193-225.

Stone, Sandy. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” The Transgender

Studies Reader. Eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge, 2006. 221-35.

Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008.

Udis-Kessler, Amanda. “Identity/Politics: Historical Sources of the Bisexual Movement.” Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology. Eds. Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason. New York: NYU Press, 1996. 64-86.

Whittle, Stephen. Foreward. The Transgender Studies Reader. Edited by Susan Stryker and

            Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge, 2006. xi-xvi.

Hi all,

attached are links to the three different opening scenes of my video presentation, a link to my theoretic rationale, and a link to the website of Stelarc.
What an amazing class we had. Thanks to everyone.

Have a great summer,

Maggiescottfinal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz9cky-Z_NA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC-xxgQnOcw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bvznIeLLk4

http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/

I hated leaving so early last night, but the clock was ticking away before completing and posting my Statistics Final Exam to Webcourses; of course, I hadn’t finished it before coming to class.

Just wanted to say how much I immensely enjoyed meeting the T&T doctoral students and realizing how much we had in common. It was such a delightful experience. Each of you are so talented and will make great contributions to your actor-network. (clearning throat…)

Seriously, I’m hoping I will meet you again in another course before we finish our doctorates. Perhaps I’ll run into you in an Instructional Class over in Education (course numbers start with EMEXXXX). Enough advertising…

I’ve attached my term project on Embodiment is a Process. It proved to be a catharsis and synthesis of the theory, the doctoral experience, and the convergence of T&T and Instructional Technology, for me.

Enjoy the paper and let me know if any part of it resonated with you. Keep in touch!

All the best,

Jan Daugherty, MBA
Doctoral Student, UCF-COE-IT
daugmatic@aol.com; jfdaughe@mail.ucf.edu

My project presentation will make more sense if you can take a few minutes to read this post responding to Marcel O’Gorman’s E-Crit from last semester:

http://tatwork.blogspot.com/2008/09/response-to-ogormans-e-crit.html

Thank you!

I’d like to take a look at the Massumi text for my final project, but I don’t have a copy of it and it’s too late to order it and get it in time. Thanks,

John

I am focusing in on the idea of portraying identity in SL through static images. The sphere idea is not working out. There have been several hours spent trying to get the shape right and it really looks quite unappealing. So the idea is switching to more of a billboard type array of pictures. In my case, I am going to actually create an image tree. I had an idea for it several days ago and there is one image that sort of leads to most other things/people/places in my life at the moment.

Both O’Gorman’s E-Crit as well as Ulmer’s Mystory come to mind as this could be a self reflective exercise. The images brought into display on the panels do not have to be pictures. If the individual can find images on the web that s/he identifies with then those images are placed on the panels. Given there is no depth, height, length limitations (well you cannot fill a sim with an image but that is unlikely to be a problem) the panels can be adjusted proportional to the value of the image to the individual.

The take-away for anyone who wants to participate in the activity is quite valuable in SL. Aside from the reflective aspect which of course can help the individual with his/her in-world (or real-world) identity, the person who takes on this project will learn basic ‘build’ing skills as well as how to create custom textures. The images, once uploaded to SL become textures. The user then must put the textures onto the panels. In SL understanding the dimensions of objects as well as how to shape and move them is valuable. An individual unfamiliar with SL will learn some basic and very helpful skills while engaging in this kind of project.

There are two friends in-world that I wanted to create one of these so I could demo them in class. I was looking forward to having the class look at the images and try to ‘identify’ something about these people. Like the sphere idea, that is not working out. One of them is doing a total of 7 speaking session in SL this month and is swamped and the other just had his father pass away. There is one other possibility but I have not approached him yet. Keep your fingers crossed or else there will just be my panels to look at for the display portion of my project.

Oh – and I thought this was interesting. Since we were all discussing earlier this term how the great it would be if links in texts could be updated – someone of course is already doing this! I am intrigued!

Want to see what is happening NOW? This is pretty cool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImAD8BOBOhw

Pretty Cool stuff!

)
Michelle

I thought some of you might be interested in Jenny Holzer’s work. It reminds me of some of the examples we’ve seen of art playing with texts and technologies and the political implications of both. This exhibit was briefly reviewed on Feministing.