As You Wear: Cross-Dressing and Identity Politics in Jackie Kay's Trumpet
2007; Bridgewater State University; Volume: 8; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1539-8706
Autores Tópico(s)Contemporary Literature and Criticism
ResumoAbstract This paper explores the theories and practices of cross-dressing through the lens of Jackie Kay's novel, Trumpet (1998). In the course of Trumpet, Kay explores the life of a fictional protagonist, 'Joss Moody', who was born a woman but lived as a man. With close reference to recent critiques of cross-dressing, this paper conducts a detailed analysis of identity, gender, and personal autonomy as they are constructed within the terms of Kay's text. Furthermore, it works to illustrate the complex ways in which gender and individuality intersect in contemporary cultures, while exposing the logic of gender binarism to intense critical scrutiny. Keywords: Identity, cross-dressing, choice. ********** You are what you wear. You are what you were. Within the space between these two sentences--almost identical, yet utterly different--lies the disputed territory of cross-dressing. As a practice, cross-dressing destabilises the system of binary oppositions that structure Western metaphysical space: the cross-dresser, after all, falls between the marker poles of male/female, masculine/feminine, cultural/biological, conformist/unconventional. In a society that is obsessed by the question What are you?--a question that speaks to a deep need to categorise and authenticate individual identities--the cross-dresser functions as a disorderly and subversive presence: by resisting assimilation within a system of binary oppositions, he or she reveals the inadequacy of this system, and, furthermore, questions the extent to which appearance and identity are coextensive. If we expect to be able to 'read' indicators of sex, gender and sexuality, and if we expect certain things to appear certain ways, then cross-dressing works by reversing these expectations. Given that the practice of cross-dressing can take a variety of different forms, it cannot be conceptualised in accordance with any singular logic. As Marjorie Garber explains in Vested Interests (1992), 'to restrict cross-dressing to the context of an emerging gay and lesbian identity is to risk ignoring, or setting aside, elements and incidents that seem to belong to quite different lexicons of self-definition and political and cultural display' (5). Using Garber's statement as a point of departure, I would like to argue that cross-dressing--or 'crossing', as it is otherwise known--is synonymous with choosing. (2) The process of developing an individual identity is, after all, a dynamic one: identity is not, as Garber argues, singular and inflexible, but plural, fluid, and often contradictory. Read within this context, Jackie Kay's Trumpet (1998) offers a valuable illustration of the problematic nature of identity. Through the freedom offered by fiction, Kay explores the issue of cross-dressing and, relatedly, the difficulty of gaining insight into identities that are not our own. It is my conviction in this article that cross-dressing is a choice; it is a dynamic process that is governed by the individual. Without the individual, there is only a pile of clothes; the accessories that facilitate, but which do not constitute, the act of cross-dressing: clothes may make the man, but only when they are worn. To attempt to impose a singular significance onto an act of individual choice is undoubtedly glib and prescriptive, but it also threatens to ignore the potential complexity and multiplicity of that act's meaning. If cross-dressing exposes the rigidity, and consequent inadequacy, of binary modes of thought, then it must also, to some extent, reveal the fluid and multifaceted nature of the 'other'. For Kate Bornstein in Gender Outlaw (2004): All the categories of transgender find a common ground in that they break one or more of the rules of gender: what we have in common is that we are gender outlaws, every one of us. To attempt to divide us into rigid categories (You're a transvestite, and you're a drag queen, and you're a she-male, and on and on and on) is like trying to apply the laws of solids to the state of fluids (69). …
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