Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality (Gender and Culture Series) - Softcover

Prosser, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231109350 ISBN 13: 9780231109352

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Examining the powerful drive that leads men and women literally to shed their skins gubarand -- in mind and body -- to cross the boundary of sex, Prosser argues that sex change is, at best, a narrative -- thus transsexuals make for adept and absorbing authors.

About this title

Review:

..."Prosser brilliantly proposes conceiving the transsexual as experiencing an Imaginary phantomization of the missing sexual organs, perhaps accompanied by an agnosic [sic] relation to the birth organs. Together, these conditions combine to motivate the transsexual to seek sex reassignment surgery as a healing of what is indeed a condition of gender dysphoria....Prosser's second substantial contribution, in "Second Skins," is a critique of poststructuralist analyses of gender and transgender....Prosser's theorization of the role of narrative in transsexual self-fashioning, and his explication of a range of exemplary transsexual autobiographies are acute and illuminating.... "Second Skins" does difficult, important work in helping us to think transsexuality critically rather than judgmentally." -- Jody Norton, Eastern Michigan University, "Lesbian and Gay Studies Newsletter"

Synopsis:

What is the relationship between the social and physical transitions of transsexuality and the narrative? And how can the link between somatic and symbolic ultimately deepen our understanding of transsexuality itself? This book examines the power of autobiographical narrative in interpreting transsexuality. Focusing on the union of body and narrative, the author conveys how transsexuality has been moulded by autobiographical acts. The book argues that the transsexual body - as a historical subject and the histories of individual transsexual subjects - is empowered by narrative. In the first part of the book, Prosser focuses on identity and bodily integrity, turning to the work of Judith Butler - who presents the homosexual theory view of the transgendered body - and Prosser's own theory of the transsexual body. The second part centres on narratives, including a critical recasting of Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness" into a transsexual novel and the study of transgender and trans-genre in Leslie Feinberg's "Stone Butch Blues", as well as lesser-known autobiographies. The book ends with photographs showing the transsexual body.

These images cut through the barriers between body and language and poststructuralist thinking focused on the materiality of the human body.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0231109350
• ISBN 13: 9780231109352
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 282