Constructing gender with a bag of sand, two swords, and some rocks : trans mutable embodiment in The Sandman, The Witcher, and Broken Earth
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Lane McClain-Rowe (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Mark Rifkin
Abstract: Due to the limits of Euro-American conceptions of gender, bodies are seen as static representations of a person’s interiority. Attempts to change one’s physical form, as in the case of gender-affirming medical care, have been met with increasing resistance in the political structures of the United States and the United Kingdom. Even the most common pro-trans narrative, of someone “born in the wrong body” perpetuates notions of interiority and exteriority that must sometimes be made to match but are otherwise fixed. Speculative creative works such as the Broken Earth trilogy, The Sandman, and The Witcher, however, present realities in which interiority and exteriority are fluid and dynamic, and mutable bodies are naturalized (whether or not those mutations occur through ‘natural’ means). Using a trans analytic, this project interrogates the racialized and (dis)abled dynamics of trans mutable embodiment to explore the limitations of medicalized and social transition and the possibilities of other kinds of being-in- the-world that rely on intersubjectivity rather than individuation.
Constructing gender with a bag of sand, two swords, and some rocks : trans mutable embodiment in The Sandman, The Witcher, and Broken Earth
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Created on 5/1/2024
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2024
- Keywords
- Gender non-conforming, Speculative work, Trans
- Subjects
- Gender nonconformity in literature
- Gender transition in literature
- Speculative fiction