Jody Animacies

In Animacies, Mel Chen (2012) relies on a self-described, “exceedingly, rudely feral transdisciplinarity,” (234).  She draws heavily on linguistics, but also animal studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, queer theory, intersectionality, disability studies and queer of color critique.  Jumping between topics of analysis as disparate as classic linguistics texts, performance art, a violent attack by a pet chimp, a Michael Jackson music video, and sexual fetish subcultures, Chen argues for the relevance of animacy to a wide range of social hierarchies and politics.

Chen’s transdisciplinarity, perhaps because of its feral nature, focuses on “slippages” in hierarchies.  These slippages are constitutive of an animacy hierarchy, she argues.  Chen’s methodological focus on movement, shifts, boundary crossings, transformations, and other animations drives her “eclectic” choice of subjects of analysis.  It compels her to look for life, liveliness, in unexpected places such as a “dead” oil well and lead tainted toys.  And it compels her to look for connections between hierarchies of non-human animals and hierarchies of humans, as in her analysis of Fu Manchu or her discussion of pet neutering policies.  Chen writes, “I am interested in exploring the means by which animal figures, in their epistemological duties as ‘third terms,’ frequently also serve as zones of attraction for racial, sexual, or abled otherness, often simultaneously,” (102).  Chen is most interested in how the symbolic use of animals shifts across contexts, or how the animation of "lifeless" materiality gets put to biopolitical use.

Chen’s focus on “slippages” is useful for thinking about my prospective research on the biomedicalization of transgender.  This focus approaches hierarchies with the expectation of that locations on the hierarchy are contingent and power operates through multiple and transitory mechanisms.  Examining the category of transgender, and the multiple locations it has in relation to different institutions, will require such an approach.  Using transgender as a case study for interrogating the meaning of biological citizenship and the relationship of biomedicine and the State in the contemporary U.S. will require attention to slippages, and may benefit from transdisciplinarity.  My research will benefit from bringing together transgender studies, queer of color critique, cultural studies, sovereignty theories, and critical race scholarship.

Chen, Mel Y. 2012. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.