Hello friends!
We’re nearing the end of our journey through this essay collection. This is discussion 11 out of 15.
For anyone just joining us, this is a chance for us to learn a little something new by reading and discussing a collection of essays entitled Transgender Marxism which can be found here - https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021-07-15_60f0b3d5edcb7_jules-joanne-gleeson-transgender-marxism-1.pdf
The intro discussion, which contains links to all previous discussions, can be found here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/395378
In this thread I’ll be reading Zoe Belinsky’s essay Transgender and Disabled Bodies: Between Pain and the Imaginary
I’ll be pulling quotes and making notes, so feel free to read along, ask questions, make comments. I hope we’re all able to learn something new together <3
Zoe Belinsky received her Master’s in the study of Philosophy from Villanova University, where she studied in the PhD program. She has since left the program, and now works in Jewish education and local organising.
This is a philosophy essay, and a long one at that, so buckle in and let’s get learning!
Edit: the discussion continues with an essay by CAACD here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/444545
“The ‘I cannot’ is the jarring, all-too-human awareness of our bodies and their limitations that we all encounter. We must come to terms with the ‘I cannot’, in various forms and degrees, throughout our lives”
Some days the “I cannot” definitely seems to play a much stronger role in determining what I do, especially lately
“Pain and the imaginary are the central loci of the transition from the ‘I cannot’ to the ‘I can’.”
Oh this is a very interesting idea. We experience pain (Belinsky cites hunger and thirst for instance), which triggers us to imagine a future state in which we have overcome the pain (for instance after drinking or eating) and then we labour (do work) in order to bring that imagined state into existence.
This is saying then, that “I can” is a product of labour, that through physical toil we manifest the imagined into the reality.
“This labour – creating human beings in a fit condition to enter the market and exchange their labours for money wages – cannot be assumed in advance, but is the work of social reproduction.”
Social reproduction, as we’ve frequently discussed, is an integral part of the economy, but is (purposefully) treated as if it isn’t labour at all. For the workers, this is often done unintentionally (in fact, they are socially reproduced to believe that this is the natural state of affairs, that reproductive labour is not labour at all but an act of love). For the bourgeois, this state has been crafted as a means of expropriating this labour entirely unpaid.
“This is the unwaged labour by which labourers arrive as readymade products on the labour market – with the ‘I can’ in tow. In other words, workers are expected to appear at their workplaces with their capacities fully intact. I contend that a process of capacitation is required before the ‘I can’ is achieved, that this is fundamentally a product of socially reproductive labour.”
“Trans and disabled people, in particular, struggle with this aspect of social reproduction. While no workforce can be treated as a given, trans and disabled proletarians cope with a unique burden, an ‘I cannot’ which takes specialised skills to shrug away.”
“This will provide us with the reasons for our pronounced difficulties with both labour generally, and social reproduction in particular. In other words, we’ll gain a broader and deeper picture of transgender identity and disablement as categories of capitalist exploitation. Through this, we come to understand that as trans and disabled people, our debilitating conditions of proletarian existence derive not from us alone. Instead, they arise from the economic structures that constrain us, coerce us, and in many cases kill us.”
Alright, Belinsky has set up the argument, now let’s get right down into it
“Gender transitions and disablement are not only ‘facts of life’, or the result of grinding social structures. They are also experienced processes – events in our lives we encounter directly, and cope with personally. Phenomenology is an approach to thinking which addresses this play of grander forces across our bodies. The point at which our capacities are realised, as our wills are made flesh.”
"In The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty asks us to conceive of the organism as a dialectical system"
So as dialectic analysis teaches us that progress is made through the resolution of contradicting forces, here Merleau-Ponty wishes to extend that thinking to an organism. The conflicting desires and needs of the organism are resolved through labour, elevating the organism to something “higher”
We are going deep into discussions of relations as organic systems, and the system as an organism.
The individual organs of a system contain within themselves the cause of their function, however their interactions with the other organs of the system form the organism of the system as a whole, and this describes the relationship between them.
An example given: the wind is not the cause of a dandelion’s parachute, however the dandelion and the wind are both organs of the dandelion-wind organism (system), and the relationship between the wind and the dandelion is the reason for the parachute.
“the organism and its environments are in dialectical relationship with each other: an environment is known by being created, and it is created by being acted within”
There is a conceit running through this describing the organism as a symphony, and honestly the music analogy may be helpful for some but I’m not a fan, it sort of muddies the water for me.