When Monsters Speak

Description

“When Monsters Speak collects essays from across the career of Susan Stryker, a foundational scholar in trans studies. Editor McKenzie Wark pairs Stryker’s best-known articles with obscure texts, to ground her thought in its historical and geographical roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her introduction highlights Stryker’s debt to early queer theory, media studies, autotheory, and subcultural forms of knowledge production, as well as the innovative forms of scholarship she helped promote through the articulation of interdisciplinary transgender studies. When Monsters Speak is organized into three parts: “Trans SanFrisco” explores Bay Area queer and trans life and S/M culture; “Trans Theory as Gender Theory” addresses the politics of trans knowledge and the power of normative gender institutions; and “When Monsters Speak” reflects on Stryker’s best-known work, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein.” In these groupings, the book brings together not only threads of Stryker’s thought but also moments in trans culture, from the 1990s to the present day”–