Description
Book SynopsisPresents an examination of the emergence and institutionalization of transgender as a category of collective identity. This book analyzes the reasons for and potential consequences of this difference - between how some of the gender variant people conceive of themselves and how they are perceived by service providers and others.
Trade Review“David Valentine had the good fortune to be conducting anthropological fieldwork in New York at the precise moment when a new term, ‘transgender,’ was first coming into widespread use. Now we have the good fortune of sharing his ethnographic insight into this new category’s emergence.
Imagining Transgender offers a provocative on-the-ground account of this important shift in Western notions of gender identity and sexuality. The book is sure to stir debate in the emerging field of transgender studies, as well as in other disciplines that concern themselves with this timely topic.”—Susan Stryker, coeditor of
The Transgender Studies Reader“The definitive study that documents the rise and spread of ‘transgender’ as a category and a field of knowledge, activism, and power but also as a mechanism for disenfranchisement, discrimination, and violence. Deeply learned, wonderfully accessible, and ethnographically rich, this remarkable book sets a new benchmark not only for all future work on transgender but also for how we might think about gender, sexuality, identity, and politics more generally.”—Don Kulick, author of
Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes“There is a paucity of ethnographically based work on transgender, and David Valentine’s book is a major contribution not only ethnographically but also historically and theoretically. Valentine is concerned with a range of value and political questions, committed explicitly to humane positions without being ideological or propagandist.”—Esther Newton, author of
Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: Personal Essays, Public Ideas“
Imagining Transgender proceeds through sophisticated and multilayered analysis. It offers a new way to approach gender and the institutions that name and manage it, and this is a provocative contribution. . . . Scholars will find this readable and engaging book well worth their time, as it will allow them to develop a nuanced understanding of transgender and its social ramifications.” -- Anne Enke * NWSA Journal *
“David Valentine’s
Imagining Transgender is a well-written and well-executed ethnography that is able to balance a critical take on the category of transgender while not denigrating those most affected by rethinking the term. . . .
Imagining Transgender is an example of what we as ethnographers
should be doing and is a must read not only for those in transgender studies, gay and lesbian studies, or queer studies, but throughout the field of anthropology.” -- Anne Rohlman * Journal of Homosexuality *
“Valentine’s writing manages to be both theoretically insightful and accessible. Whether musing on his bicycle as he travels between fieldwork sites of the street and the drag ball, or reflecting on conversations with clients and staff at GIP, Valentine presents a humorous, touching and very relevant political tale of the state of play of ‘transgender’. This is an extremely valuable contribution to work on gender and sexual diversities, and, importantly, a very enjoyable read.” -- Sally Hines * Sexualities *
“Valentine. . . does an excellent job in showing just how messy the category ‘transgender’ is; how it was born of a variety of discursive practices; how those discursive practices had little to do with the lived realities of many of the people the term ‘transgender’ claims to represent; and how taking the time to think critically about transgender as a category can create space, literal and symbolic, for those whose lives most thoroughly blur the neat distinctions between some of the foundational categories of our time: male/female, straight/gay, represented/not represented.” -- Laurie Essig * American Journal of Sociology *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Part I: Imagining Transgender
Introduction 3
1. Imagining Transgender 29
Part II: Making Community, Conceiving Identity
Introduction to Part II: Reframing Community and Identity 68
2. Making Community 71
3. “I Know What I Am”: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity 105
Part III: Emerging Fields
Introduction to Part III: The Transexual, the Anthropologist, and the Rabbi 140
4. The Making of a Field: Anthropology and Transgender Studies 143
5. The Logic of Inclusion: Transgender Activism 173
6. The Calculus of Pain: Violence, Narrative, and the Self 204
Conclusion: Making Ethnography 231
Notes 257
Works Cited 277
Index 299
