Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific

As a broad category of identity, "transgender" has given life to a vibrant field of academic research since the 1990s. Yet the Western origins of the field have tended to limit its cross-cultural scope. Howard Chiang proposes a new paradigm for doing transgender history in which geopolitics assumes central importance. Defined as the antidote to transphobia, transtopia challenges a minoritarian view of transgender experience and makes room for the variability of transness on a historical continuum. Against the backdrop of the Sinophone Pacific, Chiang argues that the concept of transgender identity must be rethought beyond a purely Western frame. At the same time, he challenges China-centrism in the study of East Asian gender and sexual configurations. Chiang brings Sinophone studies to bear on trans theory to deconstruct the ways in which sexual normativity and Chinese imperialism have been produced through one another. Grounded in an eclectic range of sources-from the archives of sexology to press reports of intersexuality, films about castration, and records of social activism-this book reorients anti-transphobic inquiry at the crossroads of area studies, medical humanities, and queer theory. Timely and provocative, Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific highlights the urgency of interdisciplinary knowledge in debates over the promise and future of human diversity.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Queering History from the Sinophone Pacific Part I: Unsettling Origins: Two Manifestos 1. Transtopia: Epistemology of the Commensurate 2. Stonewall Aside: Why Queer Theory Needs Sinophone Studies Part II: Uneven Paths: Three Methods 3. Titrating Transgender: Archiving Taiwan Through Renyao History 4. Inscribing Transgender: Intercorporeal Governance and the Logic of Sinophone Supplementarity 5. Creolizing Transgender: Citizenship Contest in the New Millennium Conclusion: An Antidote Approach Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Howard Chiang is associate professor of history at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia, 2018) and editor in chief of The Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History (2019).

Review :
Argued with precision, compelling evidence, and intellectual might, this book is a major contribution to cultural history and theories of transness. Chiang’s “transtopia” issues a challenge for us to think harder about what is at stake in constructing historical narratives around identity categories we think we already understand. This is precisely the intervention needed to foster nuanced conversations between the trans and feminist communities. It is not often that one can predict when a book will set the agenda or change the debate in an academic field. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific is such a book. It marks a transnational and postidentitarian moment in transgender studies and signals the coming-of-age for queer Sinophone studies. Brilliantly conceived, lucidly written, and politically engaging, this book sets a new benchmark for queer and transgender scholarship. It will be discussed and debated by scholars for a long time to come. This book exemplifies adventurous history at its best and represents a monumental achievement of deep archival work and theoretical acuity. It offers a new kind of queer history, one alert not merely to a nation and its peripheries but to mapping “minor-to-minor relations” that does not take the nation-state as its center of gravity. Chiang’s recasting of the borders of transness with the concept of transtopia strikes me as a once-in-a-generation insight and one that promises to reorient much of trans studies. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific is a work of immense importance to historians of China, theorists of transnationalism and globality, and scholars of gender and sexuality. More than a work of transgender and queer theory, more than a study of gender and sexuality in the Sinosphere, Howard Chiang’s Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific makes a significant conceptual and methodological intervention in how to draw transversal connections across time, place, and scale between different kinds of gender mutability. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific starts off with the deceptively simple premise of reorienting the way transness is understood beyond purely Western notions of transgender, but unfolds as a monumental and engaging work that challenges our historical understandings of gender and sexual variance. Following their award-winning monograph After Eunuchs (2018), Howard Chiang’s latest work continues to bridge and set new benchmarks in the areas of transgender studies and Sinophone studies, and is an innovative and timely contribution to scholarly understandings of transness, queerness, and Chinese cultural history. A dizzyingly ambitious book that wrestles with asymmetries of disciplinary forms and historiographical evidence amidst ongoing geopolitical upheaval in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC…Chiang brings together oft-segregated field formations — Sinophone studies and transgender studies — to stage deft and illuminating readings of the transtopic imaginaire….Transtopia is thus metalepsis: a transgression of historical grammars of cause and effect. Gender difference is not “discovered” in geopolitics; rather it founds the very forms of its emergence in histories of sexuality. That may well be the signature intervention of this book, as it demands new sight lines for the script of trans historiography. In Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific, Howard Chiang brings LGBTQ experiences in the Sinophone world to the forefront of trans studies, challenging both the Western framing of transgender and Chinese-centrism in the study of East Asian gender and sexuality. Contributing to both global trans studies and regional studies through its sharp geopolitical focus, the book broadens understandings of trans experiences and creates space for imagining different trans futures. Chiang’s monograph is a methodologically ambitious, meticulously argued, and paradigm-shifting work of scholarship in twenty-first-century queer China/Sinophone studies. By focusing on peripheral Sinophone LGBTQ communities, Chiang is able to challenge geopolitical hegemonies and consider transgender geopolitics from an entirely new perspective....Transtopia serves as a method to navigate the challenging landscape of today's transgender politics and work towards social and political justice that is not restricted by gender identity or geographical location. A remarkable contribution to interdisciplinary fields of cultural history, (trans)gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, and area studies focusing on Sinophone Pacific areas. Demonstrating several examples for doing different types of history, this book enriches a broader set of conversations in the theory of history beyond its focus on gender variability. Chiang licenses a timely solution to the "narrative problem" in the emerging field of transgender studies.