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ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES Jeudi 24 Janvier 2008 - SALLE 4 - 19h |
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Eliza Steinbock |
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Eliza Steinbock Phd Candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis |
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Eliza Steinbock’s doctoral dissertation ‘Shimmering: Towards a Trans-Erotic Film Aesthetic’ seeks to formulate a trans-disciplinary theory of shimmering that acknowledges and articulates transgender corporeality and sexuality in its cinematic representations. Eliza presents her work on (trans)gender and sexuality issues through academic lectures and genderqueer video projects. |
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Groping Theory: Trans-curiosity and Obscenity
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This F*** My Brain seminar begins with the question, ‘What if you’re trans, how does your model of knowledge work?’ Trans here refers to any subject position seated in change and transformation. It appears to me that any discussion of knowledge implies a theory of desire, for why else would you want to know? The desire to find out and to know things – commonly referred to as ‘curiosity’, a historical notion developed in the culture of the Enlightenment -- has a theoretical lineage traceable from Aristotle’s ‘epistemophilia’ through to Freud’s discussion of sexual curiosity in Little Hans and Leonardo da Vinci. Through this question, I want to intervene in the ‘curious discussion’ on the production of knowledge with the ignored possibility of transgender and even trans-human ‘knowers’. My foot in the door is to propose ‘trans-curiosity’ as a concept that suggests a way of investigating the world for the ‘otherwise’, which involves an obsessional head bumping, body groping exploration of the question, ‘what if?’ For this seminar, I will tease-out how the experimentally epic film Dandy Dust (Hans Scheirl 1998) proposes a way of seeing, not seeking knowledge. By diving headfirst into orifices, and in constant reference to bodiliness as it brash-trash theorizes, the film qualifies as a “pornosophy”—Shannon Bell’s term for philosophies that emerge from the carnal. I want to suggest that a trans-curiosity model of knowledge makes productive use of the desire to find out things as a force of movement and as a mode of non-progressive change. Finally, trans-curiosity offers a ‘groping theory’ of intellectual subjectivity, which hinges on where you look from rather than on what you look at. This is a subject situated in arousal who can then question what is obscene and what is a valuable source of carnal knowledge without resorting to morality. Required Reading:
1. Andrew Benjamin, Curiosity, Fascination: Time and Speed, The Eight Technologies of Otherness, New York: Routledge,
1997.
2. Shannon Bell, Fast Feminism, "Journal of Contemporary Thought", 14 (Winter 2001), pp.93-112.
3. Han Scheirl, Manifesto for the dada of the cybor-embrio, The Eight Technologies of Otherness, New York: Routledge,
1997. |
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