Cisnormativity and the Trans Visibility Paradox
Part 2
Part 1 of “Cisnormativity and the Trans Visibility Paradox” can be read here. While the first part of the essay was originally a blog post, the second part began life as a academic essay and is a sequel to “An Essay on the Normativity of Forgetting.”
Part II
Taking seriously the proposition that cisnormativity relies upon a constant inattention produced through the focus on the figure of the trans person as an attention drawing site of transgression, a new direction for trans studies appears quite clear, which must be to reverse its focus from the figure of the transgression to the norm transgressed. Simply put, what I am proposing is a cisnormativity studies founded upon the relationship between cisnormativity and trans appearance, where the transgression becomes a lens through which to cast the norm into a relief that destabilizes its status as taken for granted, as opposed to the norm being permitted to continue implicitly structuring the appearance of the transgression or the transgressor. This shift in attention is a necessary strategy to preventing cisnormativity from retaining its status as taken for granted, while at the same time enabling us to perceive the being of transgression, or the “anti-normative,” more clearly as both fundamentally contextual and, where it is successful, seeking to establish a new norm. Finally, by forcing cisnormativity to become the foreground of our attention, we transform transness into the negative space that conditions the cisgender norm’s appearance, reversing the order between the norm and transgression and creating the possibility for trans studies to be actively productive of a new norm. The argument for these claims we will sketch out here through a brief analysis of Stone’s “Posttransexual Manifesto” and Chu and Drager’s “After Trans Studies,” in light of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and “On the Uses and abuses of History,” as well as Barthes’s Mythologies, with the latter two authors providing us a theoretical framework for understanding the interaction between norm and transgression.
The only place to start is with the formation of the tablet of good that hangs over trans studies as a discipline, namely, the end of Sandy Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto:”
The essence of transsexualism is the act of passing. A transsexual who passes is obeying the Derridean imperative: "Genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix genres." I could not ask a transsexual for anything more inconceivable than to forgo passing, to be consciously "read", to read oneself aloud--and by this troubling and productive reading, to begin to write oneself into the discourses by which one has been written--in effect, then, to become a (look out-- dare I say it again?) posttranssexual.[1]
What do we mean by calling this a tablet of good? Nietzsche writes: “a tablet of good hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of their overcomings; behold, it is the voice of their will to power.[2]” Stone is offering us one such tablet in her essay that forms the foundation of trans studies, although she clearly did not see it so much as an attempt at founding a discipline but as an attempt at producing a trans political identity opposed to the necessary depoliticization of the transexual. The good, the overcoming for her posttranssexual, resides in the refusal to accept the cisgender good and to instead uphold its opposite, that is, the willful transgression of cisnormativity, as an act that will makes us distinct in that we will no longer be failed cis people, or increasingly accurate replicas of cis people, but beings in accord with our own distinctive telos for ourselves. At the same time, her argument reverses the good of the transexuals, demanding visibility in place of invisibility and producing the deliberate failure of living up to their ideal as the highest value. Now, we should recall the start of the prior paragraph in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “no people could live without first esteeming; but if they want to preserve themselves, then they must not esteem as the neighbor esteems.[3]” So the posttranssexual emerges from the transexual by calling bad the transexual’s good and by calling good the transexual’s bad, and insofar as the transsexual was necessarily a disappearing act, the posttranssexual is one who appears through the act of transgressing the norm. So, the beginning of trans studies, which was never inherent in Stone’s essay insofar as she was calling for a movement to change the estimations—in the Nietzschean sense of the word—at the heart of our identity and not an academic discipline, is constituted by a value reversal that elevates transgression as the value that becomes constitutive of us. Now, this is problematic for an academic discipline because what is transgressive, far from being a stable category, is necessarily contextual and always potentially self-normalizing—and this creates an impossible task for trans studies in seeking that identity which is against all norms.
Shifting from Stone to Chu and Drager, we become conscious of the problem that esteeming transgression poses insofar as the aim of our theory is in identifying the transgressive.
We can argue, and people have, about whether queer theory is possible without antinormativity (Wiegman and Wilson 2015). But whatever comes after trans studies—can I suggest transsexual theory?—will be impossible with antinormativity.[4]
Considering Stone’s foundational essay, what is immediately curious is the juxtaposition of the transsexual and the scorn for transgression. Within trans studies, and necessarily after Stone’s essay, the transsexual has been if anything constituted as transgressive of the norm of the discipline insofar as the discipline’s norm has been that which deliberately transgresses the values of cisnormativity. In this respect, Chu and Drager are not devaluing transgression at all, only shifting the context to reverse the contents of what is considered norm and transgression. But we should step back and consider the ontology transgression or “antinormativity.” Being from outside queer studies, and therefore unfamiliar with the term “antinormativity,” it seems best to naïvely wade into this debate—with the aid of overwhelming philosophical reinforcement. If anything, the problem with the notion of the antinormative is that it is inherently contextual, and consequently cannot exist independently of the norm, or for that matter, with any permanence. Returning to Barthes’s Mythologies—and to test readers on their memory and patience with footnotes—if we assume that what is constitutive of a norm is a value that is taken for granted so that it can become the unconscious basis for our assumptions, that is to say that the norm is that which is ex-nominated, whatever the anti-norm must be as an opposing value it cannot be taken for granted by virtue of the fact that what is constitutive of the norm is our inattention to it. Thus the anti-norm stands out as a transgression of the norm that takes its visibility from the norm as its background. Under these assumptions, we can understand norm and anti-norm much like Nietzsche’s concepts of monumental and critical history, where the former functions as the mythological basis for currently instituted norm and the latter as what is in opposition to it. Critical history is always trying to institute itself as the new monumental history, and when it gains power, this is exactly what happens, as we see in Untimely Meditations:
But here and there a victory is nonetheless achieved, and for the combatants, for those who employ critical history for the sake of life, there is even a noteworthy consolation: that of knowing that this first nature was once a second nature and that every victorious second nature will become a first.[5]
The very purpose of that which opposes the norm, therefore, is to become the new norm by ex-nominating itself. So, the problem with antinormativity is not that opposition to the norm is impossible or that such opposition is always a failure of achieving the instituted norm, but that the antinormative contains within itself the capacity to be self-normalizing and is therefore unstable insofar as it is successful. Today’s transgression, provided it is victorious over the current norm, will be tomorrow’s norm, giving rise to a new transgression that only took on its character as transgressive in the context of the new norm. But there is nonetheless a question regarding how the transgression, or anti-norm, ex-nominates itself and becomes the new norm, for there is nothing inherent in this success as Nietzsche has carefully implied.
Barthes’s notion of myth as constituting a kind of ideological norm provides us with a helpful set of mechanisms for understanding its relationship with transgression as one of pharmacological ambivalence where that which opposes the norm can also be its greatest support. Until now, we have argued that transgression operates as the opposite to norm insofar as the transgressive is necessarily attention grabbing while the norm relies on inattention. In Mythologies a similar dichotomy emerges between myth and its opposite: “If myth is depoliticized speech, there is at least one type of speech which is the opposite of myth: that which remains political. [...] This is why revolutionary language proper cannot be mythical.”[6] Indeed, the transgression, insofar as it remains transgressive, is political, is necessarily concrete—a specific act, a specific representation—and never fades into the background. Bearing in mind that the norm relies upon our inattention, the transgression that remains transgressive supports the current norm through drawing attention away from it. The mythical, or normal, negative space must have its focal point to maintain itself as negative space. In art it is only when there is a relative absence of a focal point that the negative space becomes all too interesting and ceases to be negative space. Myth is not opposed by, but dependent upon, its opposite: it is opposed by myth. What is dangerous to the norm in transgression is not at all transgression’s resistance to the norm, a resistance which is often domesticated by the norm itself, but the potential for transgression to become self-normalizing:
It thus appears extremely difficult to vanquish myth from the inside: for the very effort one makes in order to escape its stranglehold becomes in its turn the prey of myth: myth can always, as a last resort, signify the resistance which is brought to bear against it […] the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth: and this reconstituted myth will in fact be a mythology.[7]
The conflict between transgender transgression and cisgender norm is not in itself an anti-mythological conflict but one that is already predisposed to a reactive mythologization on the part of cisnormativity’s defenders. We see this when transphobic demagogs speak of “gender ideology.” Of course, they are peddling a gender ideology of their own—but theirs is ex-nominated because it is the cisnormative gender ideology, and so, to them and their audiences it does not appear as an ideology, just as the bourgeois ideology does not appear in France. What they see is the resistance to their myth—the myth of cisgender naturality—and in mythologizing that resistance as “gender ideology” they seek to neutralize it by again calling attention away from their ex-nominated set of assumptions. Now by no means is the solution here to cease transgressing their norm because that is quite obviously not a solution. Rather, it is to engage in a specifically counter-mythological strategy that forces the specificity of the myth’s content to become apparent. What is the counter to myth? It is “bouvard-and-pécuchet-ity,”[8] for it is the satire[9] of the norm as a farce in its attempt at naturality that keeps our focus upon all its awkward faults of dexterity which prevent it from existing in a manner consistent with its supposed inevitability. As Barthes explains:
As for the final signification, it is the book, it is Bouvard and Pécuchet for us. The power of the second myth is that it gives the first its basis as a naivety which is looked at. Flaubert has undertaken a real Viollet-le-Duc of a certain bourgeois ideology. But less naive than Viollet-le-Duc, he has strewn his reconstitution with supplementary ornaments which demystify it.[10]
The bourgeois ideology is demystified by its explication, in this case, in the form of two buffoons who embody its mediocrity. The explainer must, implicitly, exist outside the norm to have a point of perspective back upon it. Flaubert we could not argue to be un-bourgeois, but he is not Bouvard or Pécuchet, that is, not a part of their specific strata within the bourgeoise. So, we come to what transgression can do as part of an anti-mythological strategy: become an Archimedean point from which to view the norm and thus denaturalize it. In this way, it becomes the point of our perspective rather than our focus and we allow it to naturalize itself as the myth to which it is opposed becomes denaturalized in our vision.
Let us take a step back and systematize the analysis presented so that we might have a clear view of the relationships between norms, values, and their bearing on trans studies. Norms are constituted by values that are forgotten, or taken for granted, and in so being become the tablet of good that unites a group of people. In this context, trans studies can be read as being founded upon a reversal of the value order of cisnormativity as found in Stone’s call to visibly embody anti-cisnormative transgression. At the same time, if we view trans studies within the broader and yet still cisnormative society, the purpose of the discipline clearly becomes that of critical history, which in seeking to unseat the current normative view always attempts to establish a new norm. The emphasis upon the transgender individual, however, as the visible site of transgression, distracts attention from cisnormativity and permits it to remain ex-nominated, while the taking for granted of a transgender perspective enables us to reevaluate cisnormativity as something attention worthy and, consequently, to engage in an anti-mythological strategy against it. Chu and Drager’s work seeks to reject the estimation of transgression, but does so by esteeming that which is transgressive to the newly constituted norm within trans studies. Consequently, the figure of the pre-Stone transexual emerges to them as an interesting site of transgression on account of the transsexual’s proximity to the values of cisnormativity. Rather than calling into question the mythological underpinnings of cisnormativity, or even successfully devaluing transgression, this reproduces the focus on the transgressive—albeit that which is transgressive of a different norm. Taking up Chu and Drager’s challenge to find a more productive direction for trans studies, however, the work of interrogating cisnormativity as a way of drawing it out of ex-nomination and forcing it into a positive space of relief against the negative space of a normalized transness presents a potent critique. This new critique, by embracing the self-normalizing aim of transgression over and against its capacity to grab attention, creates the possibility for destroying cisnormativity and thereby allowing a new norm to take its place. Finally, through this shift we escape the problem of a quixotic search for an absolute transgression that would never normalize itself, thereby disentangling the ontological confusion of transness for transgression.
Bibliography
Chu, Andrea and Emmett Harsin Drager. “After Trans Studies,” TSQ 6, no. 1 (1 February 2019): 103–116. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7253524
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Translated by Anette Lavers, New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.
Beachy, Robert. Gay Berlin: The Birthplace of a Modern Identity. New York: Knopf 2014.
Miranda, Deborah. “EXTERMINATION OF THE JOYAS: Gendercide in Spanish California,” GLQ 16, no. 1-2 (1 April 2010): 253–284. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2009-022
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Penguin Books, 1954.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Translated by R. J. Hillingdale, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Stone, Sandy. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” Camera Obscura 10, no. 2 (1 May 1992): 150–176. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-10-2_29-150
[1] Sandy Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” Camera Obscura 10, no. 2 (1 May 1992): 166.
[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), Page 58.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Andrea Long Chu, Emmett Harsin Drager; “After Trans Studies.” TSQ 6, No. 1 (1 February 2019) 107-8.
[5] Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 76.
[6] Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 145-6.
[7] Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 135.
[8] Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 136.
[9] Here I mean satire as that which brings out the absurdity in the banal, which is to emphasis the nonsense in the assumptions of the everyday.
[10] Ibid.