2024/01/26 by Onni Gust · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Historical Gender and Feminism Studies #European history and politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1468-0424.12769
openalex publication_date 2024/01/26 · openalex created_date 2024/01/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Abstract The figure of the monster has long been used by trans and intersex scholars, artists and activists to articulate their sense of being in a world dominated by binary, cisgender norms. Yet what does it mean to embrace ‘the monstrous’ and how might that embrace inform the construction of transgender history? This article examines the specificities of ‘the monstrous’ in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Britain and empire by focusing on two figures at the boundary of the human: ‘the mermaid’ and ‘the hermaphrodite’. In doing so, it asks what the histories of these two marginal figures might tell us about the construction of ‘the human’ and argues that an alignment with the monster might enable trans historians to ally themselves with a vision of the future that goes beyond anthropocentrism.