Do we need bodies for sex? Is gender in the head or in the body?
In "Second Skins" Jay Prosser reveals the powerful drive that leads
men and women literally to shed their skins and--in flesh and
head--to cross the boundary of sex. Telling their story is not
merely an act that comes after the fact, it's a force of its own
that makes it impossible to forget that stories of identity inhabit
autobiographical bodies.
In this stunning first extensive study of transsexual
autobiography, Jay Prosser examines the exchanges between body and
narrative that constitute the phenomenon of transsexuality. Showing
how transsexuality's somatic transitions are spurred and enabled by
the formal transitions of narrative, Prosser uncovers a narrative
tradition for transsexual bodies. Sex change is a plot--and thus
appropriately transsexuals make for adept and absorbing authors. In
reading the transssexual plot through transsexuals' own recounting,
Prosser not only gives us a new and more accurate rendition of
transsexuality. His book suggests transsexuality, with its
extraordinary conjunctions of body and narrative, as an identity
story that transitions across the body/language divide that
currently stalls poststucturalist thought.
The form and approach of "Second Skins" works to cross other
important and parallel divides. In addition to analyzing
transsexual textual accounts, the book includes some 30
photographic portraits of transsexuals--poignant attempts by
transsexuals to present themselves unmediated to the world except
by the camera. And the author does not shy from exposure himself.
Interjecting the personal into his theoretical discussion and close
textual work throughout the book, Prosser reads and writes his own
body, his purpose in that stylistic crossing to stake out
transsexuality--and hence this very book--as his own body's
narrative.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!