This paper must be read as a companion piece to ‘Cutting/ Slicing/ Cutting into: Mutilation and Signification’ (Veldon, 2022)
Introduction: Parody and Laughter.
In ‘Cutting/ Slicing/ Cutting into: Mutilation and Signification’ (Veldon, 2022) I discussed signification in the act of the mutilation of Intersex bodies. I wrote that as an outsider, overtly stating ‘I speak not as an Intersex person but as Ophilia in Steinnes ‘An Act of Methodology: A Document in Madness – Writing Ophelia’ (Steinnes, 2012) does when we are called upon to remember that ‘we are finite beings, grafted at birth.’ (Veldon, 2022) That paper was a theoretical tracing out, a recovery of the excised, an examination of the scar,[1] a making visible of the invisible. That paper was a tracing out, this paper is a screaming fit of laughter. This paper is a subversion of signification, a ‘subversive and parodic redeployment of power’ (Butler, 2015: 243), this is laughing in the face of the executioner. As Deleuze argues in his discussion of Foucault. The Divine Comedy of punishment means we can regain the basic right to collapse in fits of laughter in the face of a dazzling array of perverse inventions, cynical discourses and meticulous horrors…The torturers rarely laugh, atleast not in the same way. Vallès has already contrasted the revolutionaries’ unique sense of gaiety in horror with the horrible gaiety of the torturer. Provided the hatred is strong enough something can be salvaged, a great joy which is not the ambivalent joy of hatred, but the joy of wanting to mutilate whatever destroys life. (Deleuze, 2022: 21)
I am laughing at you, we are laughing at you.
We will always be laughing.
Fits of Laughter: Signification and Self Signification.
This paper grew out of a post on social media where I explained how the signifier “Trans”/ “trans”[2] can have multiple meanings and can signify that which is imposed on us and that which we choose to adopt: There is more than one way in which we can be ‘trans’ and take upon the signifier of ‘trans.’
The first is when society marks us as “trans” which is a signifier which, as Derrida, showed, consists of two marks - one ‘trans’ which points towards that being signified and ‘ trans ‘ which points outward and situates is within a wider system, in this case the binary system of gender. We cannot refuse this mark as it is placed upon us and will not be removed regardless of our wishes.
The other is to take upon ourselves the political and cultural signifier ”trans” by which we choose ourselves.
To refuse the self-signification is to still be under the power of the first but without a community, without a defence. (Veldon, 2023)
We are marked, we are ‘caught – both seized and entangled – in a binary opposition’ (Derrida 2021a, 3) in which the ‘double mark’ (Derrida, 2021a: 3) of naming, of assigning a pole in a binary opposition which marks us with ‘one mark inside and the other outside.’ (Derrida, 2021a, 4) That is, we are decreed “Trans” without our consent, as part of a relationship of power that is constructed for the preservation and proliferation of ‘social regulation and control.’ (Butler, 2015: 259) We are “Trans” where the inner mark (‘Trans’) is that by which we are marked, by which our bodies are subject to systems of power, specifically the system of gender, the binary opposition which constitutes us as outside, as ‘defiling otherness,’ as filth, as shit[3] (Butler. 2015, 259) but, as Deleuze reminds us, this persecution, these increasingly ludicrous machines for inflicting pain set off ‘an unexpected laughter which shame, suffering or death cannot silence.’ (Deleuze 2022, 21)
If ‘Trans’ marks us out as Other, as shit, then ‘ Trans ‘ (the outward pointing part of the double mark) positions those who are not “Trans” as the only valuable part of a Cis/ Trans binary, as ‘the very possibility of systematicity or seriality’ (Derrida, 2021b: 103) To be “Cis” is to be marked as in possession of a body which is the seat of power and discipline, the seat of logos and the father who issues commands (Derrida, 2021b) (that is, to be marked as ‘Cis’ and ‘ Cis ‘ is the application of power, the granting of power and unmarked as the primary member of any opposition is unmarked.) (Lawlor, 2021) To be ‘ Trans ‘ is to be marked as the exterior to the unmarked.
In opposition to signification, to the marking of bodies as ‘other’ stands the possibility of self-signification, the adoption of “trans.” The Joy of Destruction: Inverting the Process of Signification.
In their 1987 paper ‘Variations on Sex and Gender: Beavoir, Wittig, Foucault’ (Butler, 2004) Butler typifies Foucault’s strategy to ‘defuse the age-old power game of oppressor and oppressed’ as residing within the proliferation of power ‘so that the judicial model of power as oppression and regulation is no longer hegemonic.’ (Butler, 2004: 33) It is within a model such as this that the opportunity for subversion arises, the opportunity for parody and ‘fits of laughter… an unexpected laughter which shame, suffering or death cannot silence.’ (Deleuze 2022: 21) It is here that the opportunity for parody arises, that the opportunity for self-signification arises.
If the signifier “Trans” cannot be avoided then the signifier “trans” can be adopted. If we are trapped, ‘caught – both seized and entangled’ (Derrida, 2021: 3) within a signifier enforced on us by a Cisnormitive society, a society which imposes this mark upon our flesh (in both a metaphorical and literal sense)[4] then to reclaim this, to recontextualise it as a signifier of self is to engage in a new form of the parody Butler discusses in ‘Gender Trouble,’ a form of play filled to the brim with ‘parodic laughter’ and ‘subversive confusions,’ (Butler, 2015: 268) filled with ‘the joy of wanting to destroy whatever mutilates life.’ (Deleuze, 2022: 21) The self signification of “trans” is a repetition of the imposition of “Trans” as a signifier, it is a parody of “Trans” as an enforced sign, it is a signifier that points inwards to our own bodies and outwards to our own community. “trans” destabilises power, forms community and enables erotic potentials within and between those who have chosen this sign. We are laughing and no shame, no suffering and not even death can silence our laughter.
Laughing, Still Laughing: a Conclusion of Sorts.
This paper is written in the jaws of a monster, in the tossing of a gale. An attempt to make the process of changing the gender on trans people’s birth certificate in Scotland easier was blocked by the Westminster Parliament and this has led to a flood of hate in the press, on television and in the streets. Many trans people (including people I know personally) are fleeing the UK out of fear (Hunte, 2023) and I daily see people saying they are close to breaking point. The social media post which constituted the seed of this paper stated that ‘To refuse the self-signification is to still be under the power of the first but without a community, without a defence’ (Veldon, 2023) and the time for defence is upon us. In this time it is important to remember that we have a community, we have a voice and we have the ‘parodic laughter’ (Butler, 2015: 268) of Butler and well as the ‘fits of laughter’ and the ‘joy of wanting to destroy whatever mutilates life’ Deleuze identifies, We will prevail because we have laughter and ‘the torturers rarely laugh.’ (Deleuze, 2022: 21)
References. Butler, J. (2014) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. [ePub] Abington and New York; Routledge Classics.
Butler, J. (2004) ‘Variations on Sex and Gender: Beavoir, Wittig, Foucault’ in Sara Salin and Judith Butler (ed.) The Judith Butler Reader. Malhem, Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell Publishing.
Cixous, H. (2005) Preface: On Stigmatexts by Hélène Cixous, in Cixous, H. (2005) Stigmata. Translated from the French by Eric Prenowitz. London and New York: Routledge Classics.
Deleuze, G. (2022) Foucault. Translated from the French by Seán Hand. London, New Youk and Dublin; Bloomsbury Academic.
Derrida, J. (2021a) Outwork, Prefacing in Derrida, J. (2021) Dissemination. Translated from the French by Barbara Johnson. London and New York; Bloomsbury Revelations.
Derrida, J. (2021b) Plato’s Pharmacy in Derida, J. (2021) Dissemination. Translated from the French by Barbara Johnson. London and New York; Bloomsbury Revelations.
Garton-Crosbie, A. (2023) Reports of Hate Crimes Against Trans People Triple in Scotland. The National. Available at: https://www.thenational.scot/news/23272766.reports-hate-crimes-trans-people-triple-scotland/ (Accessed on the 31st of January, 2023)
Hunte, B. (2023) Trans People Say They’re Leaving England Because of Non-Stop Transphobia. Vice 18th of January, 2023. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkqn7/trans-people-leaving-england (Accessed on the 31st of January, 2023)
Lawlor, L. (2021) Jacques Derrida. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Zalta, E. N. (ed.) Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/derrida/ (Accessed 29th November 2021)
Steinnes, J. (2012) An Act of Methodology: A Document in Madness – Writing Ophelia. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(8) pp. 818-830.
Veldon, E. (2022) Cutting/ Slicing/ Cutting Into: Mutilation and Signification. Available at: https://elizabethveldon.wixsite.com/elizabethveldon/post/cutting-slicing-cutting-into-mutilation-and-signification (Accessed on the 31st of January, 2023) Veldon, E. (2023) ‘There is more than one way in which we can be ‘trans’ and take upon the signifier of ‘trans.’ Facebook, 29th January, 2023. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/reginaveldon/ (Accessed on the 31st of January, 2023)
[1] ‘Scar adds something: a visible or invisible fibrous tissue that really or allegorically replaces a loss of substance which is therefore not lost but added to.’ (Cixous 2005, 11) [2] This paper will use two different formulations of ‘trans’ one with a capital 'T' (‘Trans’) and the other with a small t (‘trans’) the purpose of this will become, I hope, clear. [3] ‘In effect, this is the mode by which Others become shit.’ (Butler 2015, 259) [4] ‘I not only choose my gender, and not only choose it within culturally available terms, but on the street and in the world I am always constantly contested by others, so that my self-styled gender may well find itself in comic or even tragic opposition to the gender that others see me through or with.’ (Butler, 2004: 35) The tragic here is encapsulated within the startling fact that crimes motivated by the hate of trans people have tripled in Scotland. (Garton-Crosbie, 2023)
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