“I Myself Don’t Have Many Words”: Nonbinary Life-Writing or a Theory of the Nonbinary Through Confusion, Discomfort and Affective Imaginaries
This PhD attempts to theorize nonbinary gender through a close reading of around 20 memoirs, authored and published by nonbinary people since 2017. It is interested in learning how gender influences nonbinary peoples’ relations to their environment and asks how they make sense of their gender, while looking at the kind of language(s) and imagination(s) they draw on to do so. Following Jay Prosser in reading “transsexuality through narrative”, a close reading of the publications will consider affect, gender, and relationality, in the hope of detecting the common threads that shape nonbinary gender today.
Biography
Claude Kempen is a trans nonbinary person from Berlin. After a Bachelor’s in Islamic Studies at Free University and a Master’s in Gender Studies at SOAS, they are now working on their PhD thesis at the University of Melbourne, analysing nonbinary memoirs that were published since 2017. Their previous research has explored pornography, medical gatekeeping in German trans health care, and navigating the death of a loved one. They have taught classes in Transgender Studies and Queer Theory and have recently completed an internship at a funeral home in Berlin.
Research Interests
- Transgender and Nonbinary Studies
- Queer Theory
- Death Studies