Jody-- McDuffie

Two methodologies McDuffie (2011) employs are relevant for my future project on biomedicalization and transgender identities.  First, he draws connections across time, paying attention to continuities and ruptures.  He shows how concepts developed by black left feminists were picked up by, or predated, black feminists organizing in the 1960s and 1970s.  For example, the idea of “triple oppression,” formulated by black left feminists, reflected what we would now call an intersectional theory of oppression.  McDuffie highlights personal connections between the earlier movement and radical activists during the so called “second wave,” such as Angela Davis.

The second methodological approach I find useful is the type of questions McDuffie (2011) asks.  “I am concerned with understanding the process of how a small group of black women, who hailed from divergent social backgrounds and geographic locations…forged a dynamic community of left-wing activists, and profoundly shaped modern black feminism,” (16, emphasis in original).  Asking a “how question” is different than asking what? or why? questions.  The “how” is important to McDuffie’s project because it underlies a historical search for processes, not just people and places.

Connecting across historical times with varying politics and varying biopolitics will be a central element for my project.  Tracing the continuities and ruptures between a pre-medicalization era, the hey day of the gender clinics and development of a diagnosis, and the current biomedicalized era should be part of the project’s historical piece.  Additionally, investigating how shifts in the relationship between transgender and biomedicine occurred will require me to pay attention to the people involved.  I will look at how trans-activists and medical providers constructed a medical category, sometimes cooperatively but sometimes through trans individuals and trans advocacy organizations pushing back against doctors and medical institutions.  I will also look at how trans individuals navigate contemporary biomedical diagnoses and relationships with service providers.  How the state limits and often refuses to recognize transgender subjects will be important to my analysis of sovereignty.

What McDuffie’s methodology makes me think about is the importance of paying attention to the changes across time in all of the “hows.”  By including more than a superficial historical piece in the project, and by not assuming a linear trajectory or progression, the complexities of the relationship between transgender, biomedicine, and sovereignty will be better illuminated.

Eric McDuffie. 2011. Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.