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December 16, 2008
A Guest Essay by
j/j hastain, M.F.A.
www.jjhastain.com
In Kelley Winter’s essay Maligning Terminology in the
DSM: the Language of Oppression she states:
“I’m speaking of affirmed
transwomen being called “he” and transmen being called “she.” I use the term
Maligning Language to describe this specific kind of verbal violence.” (1)
I wonder what an authentic replacement to this verbal
violence (concerning gender and identity) that Kelley refers to would look
like…I wonder what types of spaces would necessarily evolve, if we as a species
were somehow more precisely able to focus our gestures and efforts on the
continued re-structuring and imagining of the places where these violences
take place.
The following outpour is a phantasmagoria built off of
questions. It is a document to dream through. It is a grouping of inquiries
rooted in belief that it is possible to proceed in our work with gender and
embodiment practices, in ways that are more involved, more evolved, more
interested and more creative.
The following is a place to begin.
There will always be some sort of a future to reckon with--to
recognize through. I find that there are some very real questions that need to
be asked concerning how to create a future that makes all beings want to
be here for that future.
What would it mean if we were to truly gesture toward the
future of health for all persons?
In order for this future to truly occur, there need be
inquiry into what and how
gender variant bodies can most accurately be referred.
This future would also need to obviously use accurate
pronouns. By accurate I do not mean correct in terms of the polarist options of
typical patriarchal categoricism
(e.g. he/she). I am speaking of an accuracy that would be
dependent on the person utilizing the pronouns (as reference) actually inquiring
of whom they are referring, how they wish to be referred. For example:
Do you wish to be referred to as he or she? Or is
there something else that you more deeply identify as?
What would it be to engage intimacies and accuracies rather
than binary induced categorization? What would it be to replace traditional
notions of categorization with fundamental openness and curiosity? And what effects
would these particular revolutions have on our bodies as we continue?
Perhaps the authentic replacement that I am referring to would
look like many spaces of uninhibited imagination, overlapping and commingling.
Spaces that are not typical or traditional. Spaces that emphasize specificity
and precision concerning the vitalities of the individual.
Perhaps this replacement would emerge as spaces wherein the
body is no longer seen in terms of how an exterior position would categorize
it--but instead is seen as a space for forms to move through. A space that needs
to be seen, acknowledged and named in terms of awe and enigma.
Imagine what it would be like if we were to treat each body
as if it were an ever original, non-debatable conglomerate. An always
developing compound. Always perfect. Always amidst. And always continuing.
I propose that it is possible that we make a neoteric
future. I believe that a future such as this will need be based on extreme
invention and vision. It will require new realms of interactivity where language
is engaged in as action, activism and opportunity to touch the most inner
places in bodies.
In this future we will name our own realities based in what
it is that actually anitmates us--what it is that brings us to life. A future
where we reach to understand others’
self-named realties with excitement and vigor rather than
fear or complacency.
This will be a future that requires that we not fear
differentiation. This will be future that demands that we understand variance.
In this future we will necessarily transmogrify the
polarizing issue of exteriority.
Traditional categorizations and misperceptions will be further
specified, because there will be space made for variant bodies to speak their
accuracies concerning them.
In this future, in the place of patriarchal history we will
implant shining, myriad glossaries of exactness.
As Lyn Hejennian states:
“a work that is not a closed
symmetrical whole, but an unfolding dynamic integrity.”(2)
This future is a work that we allow to progress through
models of motility.
If we consider perceiving in terms of its limits and we
admit those limits and are willing to extend further than our own perceptions
in order to expand, I believe it is possible for us to progress into this
future with deeper and more profound notions of respect.
If we engaged in these ways, then perhaps what we would
construct as methodologies to engage with the very bodies to which were are
referring would be that much more developed in terms of space, capacity to
understand and willingness to offer.
This future would no longer be dominated by rhetoric that
incites fear or exteriorly deterministic frames of acceptability that demand
social normatively. This future would be a place where we as a species, take pride
in the study and active progressing of axiological tendencies concerning aptitude.
In this future, where previous histories and categorical
imperatives, are seen and understood as insufficient (in their representation
of all bodies) and are thereby in need of extreme imagination:
A place of beautiful distinctions and descriptions where we
admit to one another:
I know you are not solvable. I
will not try to control you or limit you.
A place from there we engage the following questions
together:
What is the body capable of What
is the body for?
“I can only begin a posteriori, by
perceiving the world as vast and overwhelming; each moment stands under an
enormous vertical and horizontal pressure of information. Potent with
ambiguity, meaning-full, unfixed and certainly not complete. What saves this
from becoming a vast undifferentiated mass of data and situation is one’s
ability to make distinctions.”(3)
This is my hope for a future of personal, infused sites for
accurate, limitless imaginations and motilities.
This future engages languages which attend and adhere to the
body as a multifarious site of motions along an unending spectra. This future
that prides itself in the urgencies of inclusion, that honor and recognize
gender variant or gender transcendent (4) bodies: bodies that are not
currently, thoroughly or accurately represented in the context of patriarchal
historicity.
Our future that sees the body as subjective matter in
desperate need of spaces to declare itself, within a social context that allows
those declarations to be accurate, full and visible.
To consider our bodies as one would the following question:
Is there an answer for bread?
In this future we would become the work we engage in. A work
that is reaching to itself by breaking open/discovering and accumulating spaces
for its future.
This future would be the inherent reversal of Dylan
Scholinski’s question:
“have you ever been so false
your skin is your enemy” (5)
At cadences of ritual and nourishment, honor and vivisection
where we become what it is that moves us
our voices increasing halo
supplying new
types of verdant
as ever unconditional
fields for us to plant in.
References:
(1) Maligning Terminology in the DSM: The Language of
Oppression (Kelley Winters)
(2) The Language of Inquiry (Lyn Hejenian)
(3) The Language of Inquiry (Lyn Hejenian)
(4) the following italicized term is a term used in both
essays and conversation with Kelley Winters
(5) The Last Time I Wore a Dress (Dylan Scholinski)
About the Author: j/j hastain is a performance
artist, photographer, musician,
gender-revolutionary and phonic-theorist. j/j’s poetry,
essays and chapbooks have appeared in publications both online and in print: Cliterature,
Hot Whiskey, Mappemunde, MiPOesias, slumgullion, Fact-Simile, hotmetalpress
Poetry Prize 2008, etc. j/j published a book with livestock editions. j/j has
a book coming out with BlazeVox. j/j received a BA in poetry, music, gender
and cultural studies, and an MFA in contemporary poetics.
j/j defines as trans (which is different than transgendered,
though not at all discounting it). j/j is interested in the differentiated
usages of the prefix trans (when it is utilized in ways that are not at all
related to previously determined models with binary derived bases). j/j’s
life work involves embodying/inhabiting the body as one would a neoteric
space—through ways and methods that are not related to previously prescribed
shapes that are based in limit.
j/j lives outside Boulder, CO with j/j’s Beloved. contact
j/j at: www.jjhastain.com
Published here with permission of the author
Copyright © 2008 j/j hastain
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