Monsters, desire and the creative queer body. Issue 5 (2nd September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jones, Stacy Holman; Harris, Anne
• Is Part Of: Continuum. Volume 30:Issue 5(2016)
• Page Start: 518
• Page End: 530
• Publication Date: 2016-09-02
• Subjects: Motion pictures -- Australia -- Periodicals; Broadcasting -- Australia -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Periodicals; 306.05
• DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2016.1210748
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1030-4312

Abstract

Abstract: In this essay, we return to the queer potential of the monstrous and extend it to the 'invisibility' and unintelligibility of non-binary trans* gender subjectivities and femme sexuality. In a text that moves between performative and expository prose – between two voices who speak to the rage, pride, and pleasure of monstrously queer gender identifications and sexualities – we write the power of being seen but not understood, of passing unnoticed, of subverting sexual and gender fixities. Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the monstrous is both a construction, a figure who signifies selves and ways of living the world cannot 'bear to see', and a narrative 'form of unleashing', a way of writing ourselves out of the 'bind' of gender binaries, heteronormative desires and traditional forms of kinship.