It is, for sure. I mean, a dis-ease within your own form is considered viral, a sickness - I did a lot of art and research about this at one point in time. I'd like to do more exploration of the boundaries surrounding the definitions of what counts as a mod, what counts as dysphoria, and what counts as illness. This is because I would willingly implant swappable meat-bits into myself to, say, repair my damn eyeballs. And also, I had people doing a lot of cutter work on my ears once upon a time. My hearing = body modification. But because hearing does not show quite so strongly as, say, facial hair, it's classed differently. Dis-ability, dis-ease.
I did quite a lot of work on cyborgs and the incorporation of extended memory/physical capacity through non/detachable bits, as well. They fascinate me. Liminality fascinates me, too. Edges, hang-times, between-spaces. I think queer theory represented the first major foray into what it really means to splice people and things into the area between people and things, and that "trans" can mean a hell of a lot more than gender. But that no matter what area it occupies, it will always (c/o Kristeva, theories of abjection, and Haraway, theories of the cyborg, and of course Butler, with theories of performativity) make people very uncomfortable. Kristeva is probably my favorite theorist because of how clearly she points out that people who occupy interspaces cause discomfort on account of the human need for rules and classifications. It's interesting that the more tightly Western society is bonded to search engines and distributed networking, the fewer meatspace rules we respect - detachment from the physical promotes negotiation of nonphysical space in new terms, which then spiral back into physical alterations. I could write for the next twenty years on these topics, but they're becoming visible all around me already, particularly in the bigger, more interspacy cities. The bigger the number of components, the higher social-frictive coefficient, the more social anxiety, the deeper need to establish individuality/conformity to increasingly fragmented groups. Hence Toronto - World's Most Multicultural City - having such a gigantic trans populace.
Worth noting: Transmen fall into a slightly different litmus than drag queens or transwomen. It's to do with the relative friction for men versus women changing. I saw an article somewhere a while ago on it, and how the fashion houses always put out Men's Suits For Women every few years, but it's _still_ shocking to see a dude in a dress. Woo. Butler.
I also like The Future a lot, but you know. It's The Future already, and though I can work with a wireless mouse through frankly magical light-beams, I don't have a flying car.
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Date: 2007-08-10 04:59 pm (UTC)I did quite a lot of work on cyborgs and the incorporation of extended memory/physical capacity through non/detachable bits, as well. They fascinate me. Liminality fascinates me, too. Edges, hang-times, between-spaces. I think queer theory represented the first major foray into what it really means to splice people and things into the area between people and things, and that "trans" can mean a hell of a lot more than gender. But that no matter what area it occupies, it will always (c/o Kristeva, theories of abjection, and Haraway, theories of the cyborg, and of course Butler, with theories of performativity) make people very uncomfortable. Kristeva is probably my favorite theorist because of how clearly she points out that people who occupy interspaces cause discomfort on account of the human need for rules and classifications. It's interesting that the more tightly Western society is bonded to search engines and distributed networking, the fewer meatspace rules we respect - detachment from the physical promotes negotiation of nonphysical space in new terms, which then spiral back into physical alterations. I could write for the next twenty years on these topics, but they're becoming visible all around me already, particularly in the bigger, more interspacy cities. The bigger the number of components, the higher social-frictive coefficient, the more social anxiety, the deeper need to establish individuality/conformity to increasingly fragmented groups. Hence Toronto - World's Most Multicultural City - having such a gigantic trans populace.
Worth noting: Transmen fall into a slightly different litmus than drag queens or transwomen. It's to do with the relative friction for men versus women changing. I saw an article somewhere a while ago on it, and how the fashion houses always put out Men's Suits For Women every few years, but it's _still_ shocking to see a dude in a dress. Woo. Butler.
I also like The Future a lot, but you know. It's The Future already, and though I can work with a wireless mouse through frankly magical light-beams, I don't have a flying car.