J. Jack Halberstam - In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives

In a Queer Time and Place

SEXUAL CULTURES: New Directions from the
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
General Editors: Jos Esteban Muoz and Ann Pellegrini

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Samuel R. Delany

Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations
Phillip Brian Harper

In Your Face: 9 Sexual Studies
Mandy Merck

Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America
Jos Quiroga

Murdering Masculinities:
Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel
Greg Forter

Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest
Edited by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan

Black Gay Man: Essays
Robert Reid-Pharr Foreword by Samuel R. Delany

Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion
Edited by Mara Carla Snchez and Linda Schlossberg

The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater
Edited by Alisa Solomon and Framji Minwalla

Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism
Edited by Arnaldo Cruz-Malav and Martin F. Manalansan IV

Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces
Juana Mara Rodrguez

Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance
Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini

Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture
Frances Negrn-Muntaner

Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era
Marlon B. Ross

Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality
Dwight A. McBride

In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives
Judith Halberstam

Judith Halberstam

Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York and London
www.nyupress.org

2005 by New York University
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Halberstam, Judith, 1961
In a queer time and place : transgender bodies, subcultural lives
Judith Halberstam.
p. cm.(Sexual cultures)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0814735843 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0814735851 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Teena, Brandon, 19721993. 2. Transsexualism.
3. Gender identity. 4. Sex role. 5. Transsexuals in motion pictures.
6. Transsexuals in literature. 7. Marginality, Social. I. Title. II. Series.
HQ75.5.H335 2004

306.768dc22 2004018151

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

c 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In a book about time, timing is everything, and as I finish this manuscript and begin a new project, I am also on the verge of leaving one job and taking another. Since the Literature Department at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) has provided such an extraordinary intellectual environment for my work, I feel as regretful about leaving my colleagues in La Jolla as I am excited about my move to the University of Southern California (USC) in downtown Los Angeles. UCSDs Literature Department is far ahead of its time in terms of its conception of cultural studies, global cultures, and the future of the humanities; I have learned so much there about how to be a part of an evolving intellectual project and how to collaborate with people who may have different scholarly interests from my own. But it is time to leave there and begin something new, and as I leave, I want to thank and acknowledge the entire department. I also extend thanks for support at UCSD that ran far beyond the bounds of collegiality over the years to John D. Blanco, Michael Davidson, Page Dubois, Steven Epstein, Steve Fagin, Takashi Fujitani, Rosemary Marangoly George, Nicole King, Susan Kirkpatrick, Nayan Shah, Shelley Streeby, and Lisa Yoneyama. Lisa Lowe has been an exceptional friend and a model for how to combine an impassioned pedagogy with a principled commitment to abstract thinking. Working with her on our Perverse Modernities series has been an honor and an inspiration, and in many ways it is Lisas vision of intellectual community that I take away with me from La Jolla. Eileen Myles and I have been victims of bad timing in that I am leaving as she settles into building an arts scene in San Diego; but I look forward to creating queer havoc with her in the larger arena of Southern California. David Roman, my new colleague at USC makes the move from UCSD to USC, exciting and worthwhile.

An incomplete list of other friends and colleagues who have supported this work across queer space and time and in a variety of locations include Lauren Berlant, Daphne Brooks, Judith Butler, George Chauncey, David Eng, Jillana Enteen, Licia Fiol-Matta, Carla Freccero, Elizabeth Freeman, Diana Fuss, Jane Gallop, Jody Greene, David Halperin, Laura A. Harris, Gil Hochberg, John Howard, George Lipsitz, Ira Livingston, Amelia Jones, Amy Kautzman, Kara Keeling, Laura Kipnis, Heather Love, Richard Meyer, Esther Newton, Marcia Ochoa, Jenni Olson, Katrin Pahl, Pratibha Parmar, Jordana Rosenberg, Gayle Rubin, James Schultz, Cherry Smyth, Gayle Wald, Patti White, and Robyn Wiegman. In Australia, I thank Vicky Crowley, Fanny Jacobsen, Annamarie Jagose, and Linnell Secomb. In Taiwan, thanks to Antonia Chao, Josephine Ho, Naifei Ding, Jiazhen Ni, and Amie Parry. Members of the Sexuality and Space research group at UCHRIAlicia Arrizon, Tom Boellstorff, Rod Ferguson, Glen Mimura, Chandan Reddy, Jennifer Terry, and Karen Tongsonhave provided me with a generative discussion space for new ideas. Karen Tongson in particular has been an excellent ally and interlocutor. I thank David Theo Goldberg and UCHRI for hosting the group. For sharing their artwork and their ideas about it with me, I thank Linda Besemer, Brian Dawn Chalkley, Silas Howard, JA Nicholls, and Del LaGrace Volcano.

Jos Esteban Muoz and Ann Pellegrini have been encouraging series editors, and NYU Presss Eric Zinner has been helpful throughout. Lisa Duggan and Nicholas Mirzoeff were tough and careful readers of the manuscript, and this book is much better for their generosity and care. My appreciation to Emily Park for attending to the important details. Thanks and love finally to Gayatri Gopinath, still here through thick and thin.

Portions of this book have been previously published. A short version of was published in International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (September 2003): 23554.

How can a relational system be reached through sexual practices? Is it possible to create a homosexual mode of life? To be gay, I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the visible masks of the homosexual, but to try to define and develop a way of life.

Michel Foucault, Friendship as a Way of Life

There is never one geography of authority and there is never one geography of resistance. Further, the map of resistance is not simply the underside of the map of dominationif only because each is a lie to the other, and each gives the lie to the other.