[Commlist] Ephemeral Trans Practices CFP

/Call for Papers/

Whatever - A Transdisciplinary Journal of Queer Theories and Studies

https://whatever <https://whatever> 
.cirque.unipi.it/index.php/journal/about/submissions 
<http://cirque.unipi.it/index.php/journal/about/submissions>


*Ephemeral Trans Practices: T-girls, Transvestites and Crossdressers*

*Editors: *Luca Greco (Université de Lorraine) and Diego Semerene 
(University of Amsterdam).


Within the conceptual framework of this special issue, T-girls, 
transvestites, and crossdressers are different ways of naming a 
male-assigned-at-birth person who moves toward an ideal of femininity 
for a short amount of time, however repetitively, and either privately 
or semi-privately. Such ephemeral trans feminine practices are performed 
through a variety of spatial, material, sartorial and linguistic 
resources. T- girls, transvestites and cross-dressers (we leave the 
possibility for new taxonomies to emerge from contributors) have been a 
consistent presence in the landscape of social movements and social 
imaginaries both queer and straight, sex-positive and reactionary. As 
the exemplary case of Mario Mieli in Italy, a leading figure of FUORI 
(Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Revoluzionario Italiano), who defines 
themself as a “part-time transvestite,” (Mieli 2019), they question the 
dichotomy between cisgender vs. transgender identities, bringing to life 
very specific forms of passing and transiting.


In this issue we would like to turn our attention to the figure of the 
ephemeral trans woman, whose trans-ness is made visible to others for 
short periods of time and either privately or semi-privately (unlike 
drag practices which are the subject of public performances). We are 
particularly interested in the contemporary part-time trans feminine 
subject who emerges, or is rendered possible, with the popularization of 
the Internet, when she is able to purchase her accoutrements and connect 
with trans amorous partners with practicality and privacy – as if 
nothing ever happened. T-girls, transvestites and crossdressers have not 
succeeded in attracting the attention of scholars all while growing with 
and via the popularization of digital media technologies and the hook-up 
cultures that they have enabled. It has never been /technically /easier 
tobecome,play,orpassas,transforaday,anevening,orahalfhour. 
Thistranssubject oscillates back and forth, quickly transitioning and 
detransitioning between multi- semiotic gender presentations, through 
styling, not surgical or pharmacological means. In this special issue, 
we want to explore trans-ness, then, as a fleeting embodied /enjoyment 
/device (potentially for short-lived sex, fantasy, desire and amusement) 
and as a nomadic assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, Braidotti 1994) 
composed by corporeal, linguistic, material, and spatial resources. In 
this framework, trans(-ness) is more praxeological than ontological, 
closer to a technological means than an end, or even a process.


We would also like to investigate why the figure of the part-time trans, 
who may “be” trans full-time but whose trans-ness is made legible only 
in targeted moments and discrete spaces, has been neglected by queer 
theories invested in less elusive forms of being. What kind of fantasies 
of queerness, or trans-ness – in academic, intellectual and activist 
circles – might the T-girl/ transvestite/crossdresser threaten to disrupt?

We envision four main axes in the sexual/social life of the part-time 
trans woman: *languaging*, *temporality*, *spatiality*, and *sartoriality.*

*
*

*• **/Languaging/**: labelling, interacting, mixing*

i) What are the multi-semiotic resources mobilized by transvestites in 
order to perform their different, and intersectional, femininities? How 
do they linguistically occupy the other’s gaze? What are the categories, 
the pronouns, the names used by transvestites in order to talk about 
their bodies-in-progress, and to refer to their own selves in encounters 
with trans-attracted partners? Are they disidentifying with binary 
linguistic models of masculinities and femininities? And how might they 
forge a place for themselves in different languages, geographies and 
settings? Can we observe some hybrid linguistic, plurilingual forms of 
indexing polyphonic, racialized and /fronterizas /identities (Anzaldua 
1990, Barret 1999, Hall 2005)? What does the “T” in T-girl really stand 
for? Can she speak, or does her voice pose a threat to the fantasy that 
makes her encounters possible? What is the role of words, uttered or 
typed, in the transvestite’s enjoyment and her quest for the gaze, touch 
and recognition of others?


*• **/Temporality/**: preparing, waiting, passing*

ii) Is there a peculiar temporality in the encounters of the part-time 
trans from the time of preparation to the time of the digital and/or 
fleshly encounter? How is time interpreted and occupied in the 
to-and-fro movement between her gender embodiments? What happens in the 
temporal lacunae between embodiments? How are the temporalities of 
transvestite practices entangled with the temporalities of non- 
transvestite situations? What is the actual distance (symbolic, 
discursive, political) between part-time and full-time trans practices? 
Do part-time trans practices produce a different kind of waiting, or are 
there temporalities where transvestites, cis and trans women writ large 
meet? How does part-time trans feminine time complicate established 
ideas around /trans time/, along with its splits, cuts, disruptions and 
delays (Greenberg 2020)? How might cross-dressing time situate itself in 
relationship to screen time (Bak 2020), family time (Halberstam 2005), 
queer and crip times (Kafer 2013)?


*• **/Spatiality/**: hosting, cruising, camming*

iii) What are the spaces occupied by the contemporary cross-dressing 
subject? Domestic spaces, (semi-)public spaces -- digital (cruising 
sites, apps, cams) and analog (dogging sites, streets, parking lots, 
woods, clubs, parks, saunas, homes, hotels)? Do transvestites occupy the 
periphery or the blind spots of the very center(s) of cities, digital 
landscapes and sexual matrixes? How and where do they have sex? Are 
there not spaces within these practices that acquire a specific intimacy 
and that become less intimate once the experience is over? How does the 
T-girl transit, or make others transit, geographically? How might she 
queer, or not, there where she passes (through)? What kind of 
/mise-en-scène /(lighting, props, set dressing) does the crossdresser 
compose, how might or must she set the scene, to host her partners? If 
she travels, how is her movement made possible?


*• **/Sartoriality/**: dressing, waxing, styling*

iv) What are the material instruments that make up this present-day 
transvestite? How do T-girls negotiate idealized thresholds of 
passability with the body’s often contradicting borders and seams, or 
the “gorgeous messiness of trans” (Malatino 2020), through fashion 
practices of feminization? What are their stylization skills and 
dressing rituals? How much sartorial signaling is enough for the 
transvestite to successfully court the so-called admirer’s gaze? At what 
point does such sufficiency break down? What is the function of hair, 
color, scent, make-up, texture and posture in the encounter between the 
part-time trans woman and the other? Where does she buy her clothes and 
her shoes? How does she figure out her size? Can her aesthetics point 
toward new epistemologies, or epistemological disobediences (Preciado 
2020), of sexual difference beyond the somatic, the binary, the social 
and even the signifier?

We seek article-length submissions that explore the contemporary 
cross-dressing subject as laid out here but we are also interested in 
submissions that respond to the CFP’s blind spots.

We would like contributions that engage with ephemeral trans feminine 
praxes of our time through trans-national and inter-disciplinary 
approaches that include, but are certainly not limited to: trans 
studies, queer theory, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, queer of color 
critique, fashion theory, media studies, semiotics, anthropology, 
philosophy and linguistics.


*Timeline of the special issue*

Prospective contributors should submit 1000-word extended abstracts by 
*19 April 2022 *through the journal website following a guided five-step 
anonymous submission process. Abstracts should be clearly labeled as 
such. A submission checklist and guidelines are available at: 
https://whatever.cirque.unipi.it/index.php/journal/about/submissions 
<https://whatever.cirque.unipi.it/index.php/journal/about/submissions>.

Extended abstracts must include: topic, thesis, type of data, 
methodological and theoretical approaches, expected 
conclusions/findings, partial bibliography.


*Bio of the co-editors:*

*Luca Greco *is Full Professor in Sociolinguistics and Gender & Language 
Studies at the Université de Lorraine (Metz, France). Greco is the 
author of a monography on Drag King Workshops - /Dans les coulisses du 
genre: la fabrique de soi chez les Drag Kings /(2018) - and of various 
articles, special issues and edited books on gender and language 
studies, queer linguistics, and border studies. Greco’s research focuses 
on embodied gender and multimodality, performance in contemporary art 
and everyday practices, and on borders in action. Forthcoming 
publications include “ Imagining Performances : Entangled Temporalities 
and Corporalities in Drag King Encounters ». In R. Barrett & K. Hall 
(eds.) /The Oxford/

/Handbook of Language and Sexuality/, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 
and “Rethinking gender as performance in language, gender and sexuality 
Studies: some examples from walking practices in drag king workshops”. 
In J. Baxter & J. Angouri (eds.) /The Routledge Handbook of 
Language,Gender and Sexuality/, London, Routledge.

https://univ-lorraine.academia.edu/lucagreco 
<https://univ-lorraine.academia.edu/lucagreco>

*Diego Semerene *is Assistant Professor of Queer and Transgender Media 
and Cultural Analysis at University of Amsterdam and member of the 
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). Semerene holds a Ph.D. in 
Media Arts and Practice from the University of Southern California and 
has published on new media technologies, psychoanalysis and queer sexual 
practices. Recent publications include “Cross- Dressing Violence: 
Digital Barebacking as Symbolic Drag,” in R. Varghese (ed.) /RAW: PReP, 
Pedagogy, and the Politics of Barebacking /(University of Regina Press), 
“Creampied to Death: Ejaculative Kinship in the Age of Normative Data 
Flows,” in /Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society/, and “Tailoring the

Impenetrable Body All Over Again: Digitality, Muscle and The Men’s Suit” 
in /The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies/. @diegosemerene

https://uva.academia.edu/DiegoSemerene 
<https://uva.academia.edu/DiegoSemerene>


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