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Download file"Pronouns are problematic": The trans* body and gender theory; or, revisiting the Neo-Victorian Wo/Man’
This article reads the representation of trans* subjectivity in Wesley Stace’s Misfortune
(2005) and considers its implications for neo-Victorian studies. My argument is twofold.
Firstly, I contend that Stace’s novel restages responses from trans* studies to Judith Butler’s
early theorising in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Woman (1990) on issues
of gender and embodiment, something also explored by Butler in Bodies That Matter: On the
Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993). Secondly, I propose that, by reading Misfortune more
fully through a trans* studies lens, Stace’s novel elucidates greater insight into trans* identity
than hitherto has been recognised. In situating these points side-by-side, I consider the ways
that neo-Victorian studies could engage more widely with the nuances of debates relating to
– and issues arising from – gender theories, and consider how this flourishing genre engages
more widely with LGBTQIA+ politics than is often explored.
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- English and Drama
Published in
Neo-Victorian StudiesVolume
13Issue
1Pages
75-99Publisher
Swansea UniversityVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Swansea University under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2020-12-01Publication date
2020-12-15ISSN
1757-9481Publisher version
Language
- en