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Herrigel, E. (1953) Zen in the Art of Archery,trans. R.F.C. Hull. New York: PantheonBooks.

Mauss, M. (1950) Sociologie et anthropologie.Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Miyamoto, M. (1993) The Book of Five Rings,including The Book of Family Traditions on theArt of War by Munenori Yagyu, trans.T. Cleary. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

TransgenderConstantina Papoulias

The shifting fortunes of the term transgendersince the early 1990s testify to the faultlinesand methodological impasses in the theo-rization of gender across numerous disciplines. Atthe same time transgender marks the forging andtransformation of alliances and collectivities inpolitical activism. Transgender is one of the latestin a series of terms which, in the social sciences,have sought to name counter-normative material-izations of gender on individual bodies, throughpractices of gender-crossing either in matters ofdress and presentation, and/or in terms of bodymodification. Transgender is an umbrella term,which emerged partly in contestation to thehegemonic uses of the term transsexuality inboth medical and social science discourse.

Since the work of Harold Garfinkel, the studyof transsexual experiences has become a kind ofroyal road for the theorization of gender asperformance by sociologists espousing a version ofwhat would gradually become identifiable as socialconstructionism. Garfinkels study of Agnes, ayoung male-to-female transsexual whom hebelieved to have been intersexual, was at thecentre of his work on gender as a doing, a skilledchoreography of micro-interactions (Garfinkel,1967). Since Garfinkel, the observation of trans-sexuals doings of gender has allowed socialscientists a privileged insight into the constructed-ness of normative gender performances. Feministsociologists Kessler and McKenna used transsexu-ality to clinch the argument on the social enforce-ment of gender norms: for Kessler and McKenna,the diagnosis of transsexuality helps stabilize thesocial construction of gender and essentially

licenses the surgical manipulation of bodies so thattheir unruly materialities can be aligned with thetranssexuals gender performance (Kessler andMcKenna, 1978). A number of essays and book-length studies on transsexuality followed fromthere, arguing that transsexuality is a medicaliza-tion and pathologization of gender deviance. Inthese arguments, transsexuals were seen to colludewith a hetero-normative medical establishmentinsofar as they were only able to obtain sex reas-signment surgery if they could pass successfullythrough stereotyped gender performances, thusreinforcing the gender binary.

In a celebrated 1991 article, transsexualactivist academic Sandy Stone called for a resist-ance to the medicalized normalization of trans-sexuals and particularly for a refusal to erase theirpre-op histories (Stone, 1991). On a similar noteothers clamoured for a rendering visible of discor-dant and uneasy histories of gendered embodi-ment as a retort to the normativity of genderscripts. Transgender activism became a site forthe making visible of such discordant embodi-ments. The term transgender is usually traced toVirginia Prince, the head of Tri-Ess (a NorthAmerican cross-dressers association): in the 1970sPrince coined the word transgenderist in order todifferentiate between cross-dressing practices andthe then emergent medicalized identity of thetranssexual. In its 1990s activist reincarnation,transgender came to function as an umbrella termsignifying gender non-conformity, so makingpossible a broad alliance among different gender-variant people, including cross-dressers and trans-sexuals (see Feinberg, 1992). In the context ofpostmodern critiques of identity, transgenderactivism forged a challenge to hegemonic genderbinaries and their naturalizing force and invokedthe possibility of fluid mobile and provisionalenactments of gender. Known for her work on

Keywords queer theory, transgender, trans-sexuality

Polanyi, M. (1966) The Tacit Dimension. London:Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Sudnow, D. (1978) Ways of the Hand: TheOrganization of Improvised Conduct.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Shun Inoue is Professor of Sociology at KonanWomens University, Japan.

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female masculinities, queer theorist Judith (Jack)Halberstam claimed that the transgender bodyemerges . . . as futurity itself, a kind of heroicfulfillment of postmodern promises of genderflexibility (Halberstam, 2005: 18). Ironically, a lotof the emphasis on transgender practices as exem-plifying the pluralization of gender comes from avery particular reading of the work of feministphilosopher Judith Butler, herself a foundationalreference in queer theory. As Kessler andMcKenna had done, Butler argued that gender isperformative, but she then also deconstructed thedistinction between gender and the sexed body bysuggesting that bodies are produced throughuneven repetitions of gender discourses (Butler,1990). However, in the circulation of her texts fortrans activism, the compulsive and compulsorynature of such performances of gender was oftendropped in favour of a vision of precisely thosepostmodern promises of gender flexibility ofwhich Halberstam talks.

Transgender studies have found particularlyfertile ground in anthropology: here Anglo-American anthropologists have scoured non-western cultures for the opportunities theyallegedly provide for roles outside the genderbinary. The best-studied examples are theberdache (or two-spirit people) in NativeAmerican cultures, the hijra in India, the kathoein Thailand, the xanith of Oman, and the mahuin the Pacific islands (Herdt, 1996). Referencesto such third-gender figures have found theirway into popular literature where they frequentlybecome decontextualized talismans for Anglo-American transgender activists. Accordingly,while such anthropological research relativizeswestern hegemonic gender systems and chal-lenges the innateness of gender categories, it hasbeen critiqued for facilitating the appropriationof rich local cultural plots and doing violence totheir lived reality, so that they may fit westernagendas and preconceptions concerning thirdgenders.

While queer and postmodern theory iscredited with the initiation of transgender activismand studies, a new generation of trans activists andacademics are distancing themselves from thequeer theoretical emphasis on the mobility anddeconstruction of gender, claiming that suchperspectives elide the materiality of trans bodiesand the practices of embodiment which constitutetrans experiences in their specificity. For JayProsser in particular, such theorizations of thetransgender experience as a challenge to normativegendering ignore the strength and intransigence ofwhat many transsexuals see as their true genderidentity (Prosser, 1998). Indeed a flourishingethnographic scholarship is currently beginning to

chart the modalities of transgender embodiments(e.g. Ekins and King, 1999).

Additionally, scholars across the humanitiesand social sciences are being drawn into thegravitational pull of neuroscience for ways ofmaking sense of the materiality of gender. Whileneuroscience is generating new paradigms for ourcomprehension of embodied materiality, mediacoverage of neurobiological findings often works toreinforce a hetero-normative understanding ofgender. Thus, the provisional findings of small-scale studies suggesting that gender is hormonallyhard-wired in the structuration of the brain havegained enormous publicity and have been used todiscredit the scholarship on the social constructionof gender. The popularity of such findings notwith-standing, a turn to biology, as the work of AnneFausto-Sterling has amply demonstrated, need notwork as an essentializing gesture: rather than usingbiology as a bedrock which shores up sex dimor-phism, Fausto-Sterling deploys developmentalsystems theory to argue that brain maps andbehaviours are not inborn but emergent qualities,which develop relationally, as part of socialsystems (Fausto-Sterling, 2000).

It remains to be seen how the emerging empiri-cal work on trans experiences will respond toqueer theorys earlier lionization of practices oftransgendering. While queer theorists tended tosee trans bodies as manifesting a pluralization ofgenders, Toril Moi has recently proposed that weeschew the term gender altogether for a phenom-enological reading of embodiment as a series ofsituations in which we relate to the world in theconcrete historical and experiencing body (Moi,1999: 75). Some recent work on transgenderedembodiment attempts to embrace both a phenom-enological and a post-structuralist framework inorder to do justice to trans lives. Henry Rubinsstudy of female-to-male transsexuals, for example,attempts this difficult negotiation: in part of hisstudy he discusses his subjects identities as aneffect of hegemonic discourses around gender,while in the other part he listens to the ways inwhich they inhabit maleness as distinct fromgender roles (Rubin, 2003).

While new research on trans embodimentfocuses on the materiality of embodiment eitherthrough neurobiology or through phenomenology,it is important too to reflect upon the psychologi-cal processes through which we invest our bodieswith meaning. Psychoanalytic readings of trans-gender experiences have been roundly denouncedby transgender activists as productive of patholo-gizing discourse, but this is perhaps too hasty adismissal. While psychoanalysis has often beenused to shore up hetero-normativity, psychoana-lytic readings of transgendered subjectivity remind

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us of the unconscious phantasies which participatein our embodiment (see Dean, 2000). In so doing,they propose that embodiment, whether trans-gendered or not, is a process that no singularlanguage (be it that of neurobiology, phenomen-ology, or indeed psychoanalysis itself) can fullytranslate.

References

Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble. New York andLondon: Routledge.

Dean, T. (2000) Transcending Gender, inBeyond Sexuality. Chicago: ChicagoUniversity Press.

Ekins, R. and D. King (1999) Towards aSociology of Transgendered Bodies,Sociological Review http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/sore 47(3):580602.

Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000) Sexing the Body:Gender, Politics, and the Construction ofSexuality. New York: Basic Books.

Feinberg, L. (1992) Transgender Liberation: AMovement Whose Time Has Come. New York:World View Forum.

Garfinkel, H. (1967) Passing and the ManagedAchievement of Sex Status in an IntersexedPerson, in Studies in Ethnomethodology.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Body Image/Body without ImageMike Featherstone

The double character of the human body hasoften been noted we are a body and wehave a body; we see and are seen: our bodyis the platform from which we see the world andalso an object in that world which is seen byothers. This simple insight can be taken in anumber of directions. On the one hand, thisdivision of the seeing/seen can be used to retain astrong division between body and mind with theassumption that the body can be known andgoverned by the mind as in the metaphor of thebody as a platform for seeing. It is assumed thatthe mind can actively marshal the body to facili-tate the construction of a satisfactory body imagewhich will enhance self-worth and self-identity.

Against this sense of a docile body which can bereflexively monitored, disciplined and altered bythe mind, there are those who advocate theinvestigation of the ways that the mind itself isembodied and delimited by the horizons of theflesh. Here our basic analytical conceptual knowl-edge of the world is seen as relying on metaphorswhich derive from bodily experience and whichbecome embedded in language, suggesting theneed to be aware of the body in the mind (Lakoffand Johnson, 1999). Yet if we think of the bodyas generative, the emphasis can shift to the bodyspotential to vary, to be inventive, to be always inmotion: as something that moves and feels(Massumi, 2002).

This suggests that it is insufficient to see thebody as merely a surface to be inscribed, as acarrier of social signs. The body is clearly a poten-tial, in process and movement, something whichgoes beyond itself. Yet it is also understood as an

Keywords consumer culture, identity, move-ment, proprioception, reflexivity

Halberstam, J. (2005) In a Queer Time and Place:Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. NewYork and London: New York University Press.

Herdt, Gilbert H. (ed.) (1996) Third Sex, ThirdGender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism inCulture and History. New York: Zone.

Kessler, S.J. and W. McKenna (1978) Gender:An Ethnomethodological Approach. New York:John Wiley.

Moi, T. (1999) What is a Woman?, in What is aWoman? Oxford: Oxford University Press

Prosser, J. (1998) Second Skins: The BodyNarratives of Transsexuality. New York:Columbia University Press.

Rubin, H. (2003) Self-Made Men: Identity andEmbodiment among Transsexual Men.Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Stone, S. (1991) The Empire Strikes Back: APosttranssexual Manifesto, in J. Epstein andK. Straub (eds) Body Guards: The CulturalPolitics of Gender Ambiguity. New York:Routledge.

Constantina Papoulias is Senior Lecturer inMedia, Culture and Communication at MiddlesexUniversity. She is currently working on conceptu-alizations of affect in the humanities and onreligious attachments and globalization.

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