Gender Initiativkolleg der Universität Wien (Web)
Time: Friday, 15 April 2011, 12-14h
Venue: Hörsaal 2, NIG, Universitätsstraße 7, Wien 1010
Abstract: The ontology of cinema, in its special relation to animating life and suspending death in a ‘cinema theatre,’ may bear strong connections to the ontology of the body that undergoes surgery, which takes place in an ‘operating theatre.’ I propose that attention to the construction of human life with respect to the ways in which surgical and cinematic cuts refigure bodies may offer insight into the cultural and technical conditions that enabled ‘transsexuality’ to emerge. In this talk, I will examine the historical features and epistemological frameworks that underpin a dense and hereto unexplored aesthetic relationship between ‘early’ transsexuality and cinema. I will suggest ways in which understanding surgery through the lens of cinematic aesthetics may establish a politics of homeopathy in the place of so-called violent practices of trans body modification. Case studies of agential trans image-making will frame my analysis of surgical refigurations. I draw mainly from Lili Elbe’s memoir From Man into Woman: A True and Authentic Record of a Sex Change (1933) and Tobaron Waxman’s photograph series Chimera (2007).
Bio: Eliza Steinbock teaches at the Amsterdam University College. She is also a research fellow at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. Her doctoral project, “Shimmering Images: On Transgender Embodiment and Cinematic Aesthetics,” conducts an interdisciplinary encounter between transgender studies and film studies by developing their shared, though differently inflected, concepts.
Her recent publications include an article on sexuality and transgender bodily aesthetics in „Sexualities: Past Reflections and Future Directions“ (2011, with Zowie Davy), the chapter “Speaking Transsexuality in the Cinematic Tongue” in „Somatechnics: Queering the Technologisation of Bodies“ (2009). She co-edited Parallax’s special issue “Installing the Body” with Maaike Bleeker (2008).
The Gender Initiativekolleg organizes a weekly lecture series around the topic „Violence and Agency: Feminist Perspectives.“