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A review by djinnofthedamned
Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility by Eric A. Stanley, Tourmaline, Johanna Burton
4.0
I honestly didn't know what to expect when I decided to buy this book on a whim. I was looking for trans theory and trans cultural production beyond the usual suspects of the academy. So I bought this whim on impulse, and took a long time reading it.
There are so many things I loved about this book. Beyond its extremely high production values, the essays and conversations between cultural producers, academics, and artists contain so many gems and so many profound insights. There are essays about the ethics of cultural production, the struggles of curation and the construction of cultural/collective memory, histories of trans resistance that can be found in art, film, etc.
By the same token, I was left wondering about a lot of things. I wonder who realistically could afford a $50 art book. I understand price has to compensate for production values. Yet by the same token the price alone made me question who is the intended audience of this book. If its widely understood that TPOC, particularly TWOC, live below the poverty line, I wondered how they're supposed to access this book. In the five years since this book has been published, I wonder how price point and inaccessibility affects its reception to the very communities that its documenting and writing about.
This question was further complicated by the inclusion of theorists like Sara Ahmed. While I appreciated Sara Ahmed's essay, I did wonder whether it was appropriate to be included. I really didn't care to see a cisgender voice in a volume about trans cultural production. Above and beyond Ahmed's name recognition, I think it was a missed opportunity to forfeit the politics of academic celebrity that is understood to help sell books and actually include a theorist who could effectively write an essay on the same subject, just from a different take. I would have wanted to hear from someone who I don't know, who doesn't have name recognition, but has something important to say nonetheless.
All and all I enjoyed this book, but it did leave me wondering "who is this for?" Maybe such an underlying question and the embodied contradictions of assembling an anthology is intentional. I could see that, as much as I think its kitschy and unnecessary given that embodied contradictions are always a thing in anthologies.
There are so many things I loved about this book. Beyond its extremely high production values, the essays and conversations between cultural producers, academics, and artists contain so many gems and so many profound insights. There are essays about the ethics of cultural production, the struggles of curation and the construction of cultural/collective memory, histories of trans resistance that can be found in art, film, etc.
By the same token, I was left wondering about a lot of things. I wonder who realistically could afford a $50 art book. I understand price has to compensate for production values. Yet by the same token the price alone made me question who is the intended audience of this book. If its widely understood that TPOC, particularly TWOC, live below the poverty line, I wondered how they're supposed to access this book. In the five years since this book has been published, I wonder how price point and inaccessibility affects its reception to the very communities that its documenting and writing about.
This question was further complicated by the inclusion of theorists like Sara Ahmed. While I appreciated Sara Ahmed's essay, I did wonder whether it was appropriate to be included. I really didn't care to see a cisgender voice in a volume about trans cultural production. Above and beyond Ahmed's name recognition, I think it was a missed opportunity to forfeit the politics of academic celebrity that is understood to help sell books and actually include a theorist who could effectively write an essay on the same subject, just from a different take. I would have wanted to hear from someone who I don't know, who doesn't have name recognition, but has something important to say nonetheless.
All and all I enjoyed this book, but it did leave me wondering "who is this for?" Maybe such an underlying question and the embodied contradictions of assembling an anthology is intentional. I could see that, as much as I think its kitschy and unnecessary given that embodied contradictions are always a thing in anthologies.