Figuring the Angry Inch : Transnormativity, the black femme and the fraudulent phallus; or fleshly remainders of the ‘ungendered’ and the ‘unthought’

Abstract

This article takes up Hortense Spillers’ conception of ‘ungendered’ flesh and Saidiya Hartman’s notion of the ‘position of the unthought’ occupied by the figure of the Black- qua-Slave in order to explore their resonance for considering the interrelations between anti-black racial antagonism, ontological positioning and hegemonic renderings of gender formation and sexual taxonomies. Examining the performance and reception of the recent Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch starring Taye Diggs as a case study, it asks what role race, and specifically (anti-)blackness, plays in the representation, recognition and intelligibility of proper, (non-)normative gendered corporealities within the dominant imaginary and collective unconscious.

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