Strange Alchemies: The Trans Mutations of Power and Political Economy

The Rebis, the early modern European alchemical symbol pictured on the cover of this issue, is a winged hermaphroditic figure—half woman, holding aloft a crown, half bearded man, brandishing a scepter—that stands on a dragon whose twin heads encircle the dual figure's legs. The Rebis represented the pinnacle of alchemical transformation: it conjoined the lower realms with the higher, the secular with the divine, the physical with the spiritual, mind with matter, and masculine with feminine to depict the perfect resolution of all dichotomies, dualities, and antinomies. The Rebis is also a figure of sovereignty; it bears symbols of authority, holds sway over the elements, and is capable of surveilling all directions simultaneously with its double-headed vision. As an emblem redolent of godlike mastery over the material transformations of bodies, lives, and worlds, the Rebis exemplifies a Eurocentric and implicitly colonizing fantasy about the nature of power. As such, it...