[-empyre-] Trans feminism, Queer, Queer Relational, L'aviner

[Robert Summers]

CM wrote -- and beautifully so -- an embodied and performative email.
One fragment of one of her sentences has scorched my mind: "those who
facilitate passage between worlds."  And, is this not _one_ modality
of "queer," which I would argue, and have been arguing on and off, is
part of "trans" -- which would, of course, include trans-feminism(s)
and feminism(s) -- or what AJ eloquently has argued as
"para-feminism(s)."  (As an aside: I do not think it wise -- not that
anyone at this virtual table as argued so -- to separate queer from
feminism and/or feminism from queer, though there are differences to
be sure.)

I had a dream last night: there is a door that opened and opens from
queer to feminism and from feminism to queer.  It is a "peculiar"
door.  Ironically (?), it is MD's "Door: 11 rue Larrey" (1922).  The
door is in transition, is double, and is hidden (for some): two
thresholds to cross through.  HC is on one of the "other sides" (which
side am I on?).  And, she says, "It has always had two entrances, or
more, and it has always had a double threshold, or more: always
thresholds ... always more, always a multiplicity."  I am looking at
her face, "Some people cannot see them," she continued, "yes, some
people cannot see either."

She is standing in front of Holbein's "The Ambassadors," (1533) as she
says this to me -- actually, as she whispers into my ear: _The Ear of
the Other_.  JD is standing _beside_ her ...

A backward glance to CM's email ...

Yes, this _Bridge Called Home_ is where "we" cross, when "we" cross
_This Bridge Called My Back_, which is always an embodied crossing
where are "we" and what have "we" become?  And, let us not forget --
not that anyone may have -- that not all backs are the same (some have
choke cherry trees on them), and not all crossings are the same (some
spiral and others are always uphill).  I would argue the "home" and
"crossing" vary on ones embodied orientation(s), position(s), and
relation(s): indeed, on their embodied transitions -- as well as
trans-missions, -mutations, -orientations, and trans-gendered,
-sexual, -raced, -ethnic, -classed, as well as a host of other
identity-defining "attributes."  And, perhaps, phenomenology needs to
be reckoned with in relation to (trans- or para-) feminism(s), queer,
relations, etc.  Indeed, a thinking, as a folding of queer relational,
feminist relational, and phenomenology, would be highly productive,
but this has been a subtext in many posts, no?  But, perhaps more of a
discussion ...

"Trans-" as the always-already, and the last as a first appeal ...

Yes, between, in-between, in the middle, and also the wherever of
"queer."  Yes, one must add "(un-)becoming" because what is "trans-"
without (un-)becoming?  And this comes from the embodied writing, most
eloquently by a queer of color reading otherwise: HC and VD.

Trans-feminism: the idea is crucial, as too the enactment of this
politco-theoretical term -- and on the level of the everyday.  To
enact, perform trans-feminism in order to travel between "waves" and
"worlds" and "spaces".  I would like to think that the most productive
and provocative forms of what we have been calling "queer theory"
comes from, is rooted in, is cabled onto, feminismS and/as feminismS
of color -- as well as what is offered by way of "trans-," but what of
"para-" (and "peri-" is for another post some other day)?

Para-feminism is "non-prescriptive, open to a multitude of cultural
expressions and behaviors, and focused on excavating power
differentials.  It makes use of (or even invents) new forms of power
_tied to_ the historical and present forms of feminine (not by any
means necessarily 'female') subjectivities, while not assuming power
in certain obvious forms [so forget paranoid readings].  It is
inclusive of all cultural work investigating sexuality and/or gender
as aspects of identity formation inextricably related to other aspects
such as ethnicity, and yet specific in its insistence on messing up
binary structures of sexual difference" (AJ).

With "trans-" who to think "sexual difference" otherwise, which has
always excluded the transsexual and the intersexed?  I am thinking of
DLG's photographs or the paintings by JS: I want to think "trans-" and
an artwork like JS's "Matrix" (1999) through the work (theoretical and
artistic, but why make such a binary?) of BE's _Matrixial
Borderspace_.

Para-feminism: "[This] project is not to provide a coherent (and thus
more or less stable) coalitional politics based on the identification
of certain subjects as 'women.'  It is, rather, to explore in an
open-ended way [_The Open Work_ as a counter to _Relational
Aesthetics_], processional manner the way in which power and value
accrue to particular subjects and objects (including works of art)"
(AJ).

Indeed, whether we call a project "trans-feminism" or "para-feminism"
they, it would appear to me, an open-ended project (so, a welcoming of
l'avenir) -- they are without ontology or teleology or eschatology --
thus, they are, indeed, open to fututity without futility (a la
Edelman's _No Future_) -- to constant renewal and rethinking, or what
Butler argued in 1993 "remaining critically queer [and/as feminist]"
...

I think a para-feminist, or trans-feminist work (which informs -- even
as it is informed by "queer theory") is "easily" seen "in" the work of
someone like VD and PR.  And, here is one image (which is immersive) I
am now thinking of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD2y_jIaMso

Here is another image  (which is un-becoming) I am now thinking of:

http://www.vaginaldavis.com/collage3.jpg

More to follow -- one fine day.

As ever, rbt

Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
Lecturer
Art History and Visual Culture
Otis College of Art and Design
e: rsummers at otis.edu
w: http://ospace.otis.edu/robtsum/Welcome