Reverse Cowgirl describes itself as “an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self.” The book follows the renowned hacker/new media theorist and writer McKenzie Wark's reflecting on her trans identity; she does so through narrativizing her sex life and its relation to her gender identity via bold vignettes. She thoughtfully scans the landscape of her desires and identifications, historically and into the present, processing and theorizing her experiences as she goes. I would describe Reverse Cowgirl as an autotheory (“self” and “theory”) in which Wark narrativizes her first-person lived experiences and engenders a personal theory of transness by reflecting on her life up to this point. The reader follows Wark through an understanding of her trans identity in retrospect, with Wark moving through autobiographical scenes in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s that were shaped by pleasure, jouissance, and identity confusion—all told from a more confidently trans present. We come to...
Trans in Retrospect: An Autotheory of Becoming
Lauren Fournier (she/they) is a writer and curator. She is the author of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism (2021). She holds a PhD in English literature and has published writings in journals like Angelaki and Contemporary Women's Writing. She is the director of “Fermenting Feminism,” an antiracist and trans-inclusive curatorial project that takes shape transnationally. Her work has been featured and reviewed in such venues as Columbia Journal of Literary Review, the New York Times, Art in America, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is currently writing an autotheory of first-generation university students, of which she is one.
Lauren Fournier; Trans in Retrospect: An Autotheory of Becoming. TSQ 1 February 2022; 9 (1): 129–131. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-9475593
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