Mapping Territories

Abstract

Space is gendered. Not only is it constructed along a male/female binary (Duncan, 1996), it also emerges within a transgender dimension. Beyond the work of Nameste (2000) on space and who has the right to occupy it and Haberstam (2005) on space and the archive, there is a paucity of literature discussing transsexual space. Yet, learning to read this space is important, for it is within space that transsexual bodies are conscribed to the margins, erased in explosive passion, and allowed to become human (Butler, 2004). Although one can read space in different ways (Agnew, 2005), one does not choose a method to read it because it is true (Rose, 1999), but because it is useful. Therefore, desiring the possibility of deterritorializing lines of flight that disrupt the strata of heterosexual space, it is the purpose of this paper to examine how space, interpreted through the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), functions in the lives of male-to-female-transsexuals.

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