Embodied Archives and the Making of (Trans) History in Argentina

In A Body of One's Own: A Trans History of Argentina, Patricio Simonetto places the national and individual body at the core of his analysis, urging a rethinking and reframing of how trans history in Argentina has been understood from 1900 to 2012. If the body, as Paul B. Preciado (2018: 25) argues, is “a living constructed text, an organic archive of human history as the history of sexual production‐reproduction,” Simonetto explores its plasticity by examining the ways in which transness has been historically constituted and contested through and on the body. In this sense, his approach resonates with that of scholars like Ashley Kerr (2020) and Jorge Salessi (1995), who challenge official narratives of Argentine nation‐state formation by exposing—through exhaustive archival work—their racist, masculinist, and colonial roots, with particular attention to embodiment. Relatedly, but focusing on trans trajectories, Simonetto suggests that transness offers a powerful tool for reimagining historiography itself—one that reveals how experiences of crossing gender boundaries (whether involving bodily interventions or not) can illuminate broader historical processes like the development of national identity and democratic transition. As he poignantly argues, such experiences can “help us redefine what we call democracy as a lived bodily experience” (3).To achieve this, Simonetto undertakes a meticulous and ethically grounded exploration of archival materials, excavating more than twenty public and private archives to offer a fresh interpretation of Argentine and trans history centered on how travesti and trans subjects construct embodied meanings and practices. As A Body of One's Own highlights, travesti‐trans people negotiated their lived conditions in Argentina across the twentieth and into the twenty‐first centuries through strategies they used to construct their bodies in “homemade” ways—through prosthetic and cosmetic devices such as accessories, industrial silicone injections, and clothing—even prior to biomedical intervention. Hence, as the monograph emphasizes, trans people constructed “bodies of their own”; they were not invented by the medical system. On the contrary, as the author demonstrates, medical, legal, cultural, and state institutions were often underwritten in part by the knowledge and lived experiences of the trans community itself—albeit without recognition and frequently by silencing and disciplining these knowledges in public discourse.To challenge these institutional narratives and in addition to extensive archival research across newspapers, magazines, comics, medico‐legal publications, TV shows, personal letters, and photograph collections, A Body of One's Own also incorporates material from Simonetto's own interviews with members of the travesti, trans, and transexual communities. As acts of epistemic justice, these intergenerational conversations provide complementary insights into how travesti and trans individuals have navigated the construction of their bodies—and the historical processes they have endured—based on their desires and knowledge, while negotiating prohibitions on gender‐affirmation practices and the ongoing criminalization and persecution of their identities.In this sense, Simonetto's project powerfully exemplifies the importance of rewriting history from a trans perspective to reveal how democracy and the construction of the Argentine nation‐state from the early twentieth century onward have been nourished and shaped by trans knowledge and practices, as these have played a significant role in creating modern notions of sex and embodiment. His work makes this explicit by showing, for example, how trans temporality departs from dominant historical timelines. For the travesti‐trans community, as they denounced, the dictatorship did not end in 1983 but continued until 2012, when the contraventional codes—which prohibited “wearing clothes of the opposite sex”—were finally repealed in all Argentine provinces. A Body of One's Own unfolds across five thematic chapters arranged chronologically, though each engages in dialogue with the others. The book's first chapter, “Cut from a Different Cloth,” explores early twentieth‐century expressions of gender and bodily transgression, interweaving trans stories with broader questions of citizenship and social control. Among the recovered narratives is that of Raúl Luis Suárez, a transmasculine person who obtained identification in his chosen name as early as the 1900s.The second chapter, “The Body I Was Born In,” covers the period from the 1950s to the late 1970s and examines how conceptual, legal, and social conflicts surrounding “sex change” reflected broader anxieties about embodiment. Simonetto describes how conflicting views among journalists, policymakers, and doctors led to authoritarian state interventions over bodily sovereignty.Turning to the cultural scene, the third chapter, “Queens in the Theaters and the Streets,” reveals the significant role of travestis and transsexual people in shaping public performances during the 1960s and 1970s, with carnival emerging as a crucial space of bodily experimentation and expression.Chapter 4, “Living Laboratories,” spans the 1970s to approximately 2010 and focuses on how trans individuals developed repertoires of embodiment to affirm their genders. It examines grassroots medical practices such as silicone injection and hormone use, as well as activist efforts to transform public health systems and resist medical authority.The monograph's final chapter, “The Carnival Revolution,” explores the cisgender limits of democracy from the 1980s to 2012, focusing on public protests and the struggle for bodily sovereignty. The chapter concludes with the 2012 Gender Identity Law and the travesti‐trans community's appropriation of gender affirmation as a human rights issue.A Body of One's Own emerges as a foundational Latin Americanist and historical contribution to trans studies. Although the experiences of transmasculine individuals appear less extensively—reflecting, in part, the distinct archival traces and historical trajectories of transfeminine and transmasculine communities—this also opens fertile ground for further research. Simonetto's monograph ultimately offers a wide‐ranging reflection on embodiment, autonomy, and democratic belonging that artfully calls for “everyone's right to have a body of one's own” (21).