Universalising Transgender Representation

In current French cultural discourse, transgender subjects tend to be constructed through binarised notions of sex and to be excluded as citizens. I argue for another way to conceive of transidentity, through a ‘majoritising’ approach in which non-trans subjects are not unlike trans subjects but rather in dialogue with them. Toward this end, I analyse a 2007 novel: Emmanuelle Pagano's Les Adolescents troglodytes, a winner of the European Union Prize for Literature. Focusing on Adèle, a post-op trans schoolbus driver in the Ardèche, the text represents trans subjectivity as far from a singular experience or as a struggle against the nation or the state, but as an ecological web of connections in which transidentity extends well beyond the main character's life experience. The recurring textual links between nature and Adèle reposition transidentity as an effect of nature, or more precisely, as part of an ongoing process by which humans alter the natural all the time. Rather than isolating the trans subject, the novel suggests that she is enmeshed in nature, alongside other non-trans subjectivities rendered as trans-like. However, that universalising narrative itself transitions over the course of the novel, implicitly commenting on trans discursive formulations in twenty-first-century France. Dans le discours culturel français ambiant, l'identité des personnes trans est généralement définie à par-tir de notions sexuelles binaires et elles sont exclues d'une citoyenneté à part entire. Pour cet article, je propose une approche ‘majoritising’ pour définir la transidentité. Selon cette approche les personnes cisgenres (non trans) ne sont pas considérées comme différentes des personnes trans mais sont, au con-traire, mises en dialogue avec elles. Dans ce but, j'analyserai le roman Les Adolescents troglodytes d'Emmanuelle Pagano qui date de 2007 et qui a gagné le Prix de littérature de l'Union européenne en 2009. A travers le personnage principal nommé Adèle, qui conduit un bus scolaire dans l'Ardèche, le texte représente la subjectivité trans non pas comme une expérience unique ou comme une lutte contre la nation ou l'état, mais comme faisant partie de tout un réseau écologique de liens dont la spécificité du personnage principal s'étend à d'autres. Les liens textuels récurrents entre la nature et Adèle reposition-nent la transidentité comme un effet de la nature, ou plus précisément, comme un aspect d'un proces-sus continu où les êtres humains transforment tout le temps le naturel. A la place d'isoler le person-nage trans, le roman suggère qu'il est imbriqué dans la nature, à côté d'autres subjectivités cisgenres présentées comme similaires aux trans. Cependant, le récit universaliste même fait une transition au cours du roman, commentant implicitement les formulations discursives trans dans la France du 21e siècle. Notes [1] Complaints about the quality of sex reassignment surgery in France vis-à-vis other nations is also part of the discourse around this issue. See, for instance, Augst-Merelle and Nicot (Citation2006, 127–34). On trans subjectivity as outside legal protection, see Augst-Merelle and Nicot (2006, 165–9). [2] One notable exception is the character of the son Lucas in Une Autre Femme, who manifests trans characteristics at one point in the film and becomes a kind of symbolic bridge between transphobia and trans tolerance. [3] CitationRees-Roberts discusses ‘the limited potential for transgender visibility within the generic frameworks of narrative cinema’ (2008, 74). [4] This phobia would follow on Sedgwick's worry about debates on nature versus nurture: ‘I am very dubious about the ability of even the most scrupulously gay-affirmative thinkers to divorce these terms, especially as they relate to the question of ontogeny, from the essentially gay-genocidal nexuses of thought through which they have developed’ (1990, 40–1). [5] This term is used in French trans discourse as well as in US trans studies. The glossary at the end of Changer de sexe defines cisgenre as: ‘personne dont le genre concorde—grosso modo—avec son sexe, c'est-à-dire qui n'est pas transgenre’ (Augst-Merelle and Nicot Citation2006, 179). [6] In Lifshitz's film, this marginalising metonymy, however, is offset by representions of the North of France as a cultural space in which the love trio functions in nature as a family-like unit. The use of region and nature as anti-marginalising mechanisms resembles the ways in which (as I later discuss) region and nature function in Pagano's novel. [7] Rubin is especially interested in the function of ‘essentialized, ahistoricized gender identities ... in [FTMs’] life project to become who they always thought they were' (1998, 267). [8] For more on this topic, see the introduction and the essays in Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson (Citation2010)

Epistemology · Humanities · Linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Sociology · Subject (documents · Subjectivity · Transgender · Diverse Cultural and Historical Studies · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical and Scientific Studies · Law · Philosophy

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