Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: There is a richness in gender identifications that we must mine throughout history and rediscover in these precarious times where identitarian logics conscript us all into the polarizing vortex of neofascist agendas and Christofascist politics.Before the Enlightenment's rules regarding gender became legalistic mandates, there was greater freedom in the performance of gender, for example, through the choice of attire.Prior to modernity and before the enforcement of stable identities restricted possibilities for identification, gender was in general more fluid and less categorical.Reimagining premodern gender fluidity as part of a larger Trans project creates conditions for Trans to emerge not only as an identification but also as an analytic.In order to do this work of reimagining, we bring together our insights as a nonbinary Transgender person trained as a philosophical theologian in the Christian tradition (Roberto Che Espinoza) and a queer Christian theologian, cisgender ally, and co-conspirator (Stephanie Budwey).We consider Wilgefortis, a medieval saint who disrupts the sex/gender binary as an embodiment of gender fluidity who offers just one example of Transing and the ways in which the materiality of gender is destabilized in the premodern era.Premodern conceptions of gender offer a prime locus for us to reimagine gender today because the time of premodernity remained open to imagining otherness and possibility.It is important to note that, in post-Enlightenment thought, gender, sex, sexuality, and ability become contested sites of imagination and, as a result, have fueled many of the contemporary conflicts regarding differently abled persons and the Transgender community.While the Enlightenment offered us some gifts, it also dis-ables us through categories that are framed as binaries, cutting us off from earlier visions of gender and leaving us barricaded by new norms and values.Premodern conceptions of gender are fruitful for imagining and reimagining varying examples of transness.One needs only to look to premodern Christianities to see
Source: The German Quarterly
DOI: 10.1111/gequ.12352
Authors: Roberto Che Espinoza, Stephanie A. Budwey
Institutions: Duke University, Vanderbilt University
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,630
OpenAlex ID: W4376570191