Contours of a Historical Materialist Theory of Transsexuality

Abstract This article proposes to engage with the etiological question haunting the transsexual subject as a sociogenic project of identifying and analyzing relevant problematizations of transsexuality. The article elaborates on the social contexts of the biomedical, sociological, and genealogical problematizations of transsexuality, critically assessing their onto-epistemic stances and political fields. Building on the limitations of these three problematizations, the article projects a fourth problematization drawing from Marxist-feminist approaches. To this end, it engages critically with four different conceptualizations of transsexuality in current trans Marxist debates and establishes the conditions for a distinct historical materialist problematization. Finally, the article puts forward a definition of transsexuality as a technology of containment of the possibility of gender mobility and ambiguity within the Western biopolitical generative dispositive in its functional relation to the capitalist mode of production. The containment works through the displacement of a structural conflict of social reproduction specific to the Western modern/colonial gender order to the interiority of the trans subject, ultimately foreclosing the possibility of the democratization of relations of procreation. Gender intransigence is proposed as an epistemic and political category for historical materialist problematization of transsexuality which can provide an alternative to the hegemonic framework of gender identity.