The Transsexual Phallus
Location
Culp Room 219
Start Date
4-6-2022 1:45 PM
End Date
4-6-2022 2:00 PM
Faculty Sponsor’s Department
Literature and Language
Name of Project's Faculty Sponsor
David Jones
Additional Sponsors
McNair Scholars Program
Competition Type
Non-Competitive
Type
Boland Symposium
Project's Category
Language or Literature
Abstract or Artist's Statement
Of poetry, Lacan remarked in the preface to Seminar XI, “I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject.” In understanding the subject as a poem, one begins to appreciate the literary mode of poetry. Traditions set by Judith Butler have inundated the use of a Lacanian analysis in the theoretical lives of transgender subjects. In the use of theoretical arguments that Butler uses the transsexual subject for, such as her essay “Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and Allegories of Transsexuality,” there has been an injustice to transgender poets, in renown and the answers transsexuals have to the problems of materialism within Butler and Lacan. In other words, the real lives of transsexuals’ bodies are proof of the relevance of sex and gender. Jos Charles’ poem “Origin as Wetdream” loudly answers Butler’s apathetic attitude to the relevance of sex in the transsexual’s life. Furthering, this essay aims to examine the attitudes of sex and gender held within gender studies. This essay frames itself within the concept of “egg theory,” an argument held by Grave Lavery in her essay “Egg Theory’s Early Style.” In understanding Charles’ poem, one understands the transsexual subject. Through this understanding, the material of transition can be appreciated.
The Transsexual Phallus
Culp Room 219
Of poetry, Lacan remarked in the preface to Seminar XI, “I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject.” In understanding the subject as a poem, one begins to appreciate the literary mode of poetry. Traditions set by Judith Butler have inundated the use of a Lacanian analysis in the theoretical lives of transgender subjects. In the use of theoretical arguments that Butler uses the transsexual subject for, such as her essay “Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and Allegories of Transsexuality,” there has been an injustice to transgender poets, in renown and the answers transsexuals have to the problems of materialism within Butler and Lacan. In other words, the real lives of transsexuals’ bodies are proof of the relevance of sex and gender. Jos Charles’ poem “Origin as Wetdream” loudly answers Butler’s apathetic attitude to the relevance of sex in the transsexual’s life. Furthering, this essay aims to examine the attitudes of sex and gender held within gender studies. This essay frames itself within the concept of “egg theory,” an argument held by Grave Lavery in her essay “Egg Theory’s Early Style.” In understanding Charles’ poem, one understands the transsexual subject. Through this understanding, the material of transition can be appreciated.