Revisitation: a trans phenomenology of the media image
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/mediekultur.v32i61.22414Keywords:
transgender, phenomenology, affect, Under the Skin,Abstract
How might certain moving images move us into transgender becoming? The recent proliferation of transgender images in the media of the Global North has been widely regarded as supporting transgender political and social equality. But do these images do justice to the complexity of transgender lives? Who are images of transgender identity made for, and whose interests do they serve? Instead of discussing media that produce a transgender object for public consumption, this essay’s author is interested in theorizing a trans point of media reception for the popular image. This essay illustrates how transgender subjects might fashion their own archives of becoming through encounters with media that unintentionally support transgender embodiment as a possibility in the world. Revisiting his phenomenological encounters with the film Under the Skin and the “Milk: It Does a Body Good” ad campaign, the author analyzes how certain media objects have the unexpected power to “move” the transgender subject into becoming.References
Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke UP.
Crawford, L. C. (Nov. 2014). A transgender poetics of the High Line Park. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(4), 482-500.
Faber, M. (2000). Under the Skin: A Novel. New York: Harcourt, Inc.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove P, Inc.
Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: NYU P.
Halberstam, J. (1995). Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham: Duke UP.
Husserl, E. (2001). Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Dordrecht: Springer Science and Business Media.
Keegan, C. M. (Spring 2013). Moving bodies: Sympathetic migrations in transgender narrativity. Genders, 57. Retrieved Aug. 7, 2015 from https://web.archive.org/web/ 20140228181822/http://www.genders.org/g57/g57_keegan.html.
Levinas, E. (1985). Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP.
Marks, L. (2002). Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.
Milk boy in the mirror ad from 1992. Retrieved Oct. 3, 2015 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6JymgFusw.
Mulvey, L. (1990). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In P. Erens (Ed.), Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (pp. 28-40). Bloomington: Indiana UP.
Platinga, Carl. (1999). Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley: U of California P.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and Invisible. Evanston: The U of Nebraska P.
Preciado, P. B. (2013). Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era. New York: The Feminist P at CUNY.
Prosser, J. (1998). Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia UP.
Ratcliffe, M. (Oct. 2012). Phenomenology as a form of empathy. Inquiry, 55(5), 473-95.
Rosskam, J. (Nov. 2014). Porous cells. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(4), 586-9.
Salamon, G. (2010). Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality. New York: Columbia UP.
Sartre, J. P. (1992). Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. New York: Washington Square P.
Stryker, S. (2006). My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage. In S. Stryker and S. Whittle (Eds.), The Transgender Studies Reader, Vol. 1. (pp. 244-56). London: Routledge.
Sullivan, L. G. Unpublished diary. Cited in S. Stryker (2008), Transgender History (p. 116). Berkeley: Seal P.
Thick Relations. (2012). Dir. Jules Rosskam. Retrieved Jan. 16, 2016 from http://www.julesrosskam.com/thick-relations/
Under the Skin (2014). Dir. Jonathan Glazer. A24 Films.
Under the Skin: The Hidden Lens (2014). A24 Films.
Under the Skin: With Scarlett Johansson (2014). A24 Films.
White, P. (1999). Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability. Bloomington: Indiana UP.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright Author and Journal.
Articles published after January 1 2024 are licensed under CCBY 4.0.
Articles published until December 31 2023 are licensed under CCBYNCND.
Articles submitted to MedieKultur should not be submitted to or published in other journals.
