Basia SLIWINSKA (Loughborough University)
“Transgressing the Threshold Between the Self and the Other: the Body in Genderland ”

The reality on the other side of the mirror is, as Alice (in Wonderland) says, ‘just the same {...} only the things go the other way’. The self reflected in the mirror enters into the enchanted infinite reality of the ‘looking-glass’. The mirror embodies the space that is the beginning of the formation of a new fluid ungendered identity. Hence, the boundary of the mirror becomes what Mieke Bal calls ‘mirroring as a mirror’, a metaphoric substitution and a new ‘hybrid identity’.

This paper is about the possibility of transformation, exploring the hybridised body, as a vessel for various gendered identities continuously re-visioned in the process of becoming. It offers the possibility of travel – being ‘ec-static’ and ‘in ecstasy’ - in ‘trans’. It is a journey within and without, breaking boundaries, into the realm of myths, exploring the body as a changeable construct beyond gender binaries. By examining a selection of contemporary sculptural works - such as Marc Quinn’s Buck and Allanah (2010) or Jess Dobkin’s performance piece Mirror Ball (2008-2009) – I investigate the politics of metamorphosing the body and a construction of multiple identities with reference to Lacan’s visual order.

Jean Baudrillard suggests that ‘the orgy is over’, signalling indefiniteness and what he calls ‘gender benders’. Utilising these ideas, I propose the constitution of a new ‘trans-body’, resonating with carnival politics, excess and otherness, advocating new forms of representations of a changing, often marginalised identity. It both mirrors and transcends boundaries of sex, gender, beauty and the ideal image, being in a constant flux, trans-vesting the external appearance, which, as I argue, politicises the imposed eroticised classical trope.



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