Autotheory as Trans Method

there is something evidently feminist about the concept of autotheory; the practice extends the famous feminist insight that the personal is political, suggesting that the personal is also political theory. I propose that there is also something evidently trans about autotheory. An underdiscussed element of transgender studies is the use of autotheoretical techniques by many of the most influential scholars in the field, including Susan Stryker, Andrea Long Chu, C. Riley Snorton, C. Jacob Hale, and many more. And while the trans elements of autotheory are commonly discussed (largely due to the prominence of trans themes in Maggie Nelson's 'The Argonauts and Paul Preciado's Testo Junkie), the full complexity of the relationship between transness and autotheory remains to be theorized.

Autotheory names artistic, literary, and intellectual work that blends personal exploration, narration, or performances with scholarship and the wide-ranging body of philosophical work indexed by the term theory. Sometimes described as a genre, autotheory is best understood as a practice, in part because autotheory is often produced in media besides the written word, but also because autotheory is work. It enacts effects. It does something. The practice of autotheory manifests as a trans method or strategy for achieving particular goals.

I consider autotheory as trans method in three dimensions: for making and re-making selves, communities, and knowledge. First, as a method for thinking through and articulating selves, autotheory is a valuable technology in the formation of trans subjectivities. Autotheory's capacity for reworking self is borne out in both my own experience of coming to terms with my womanhood and in Abigail Thorn's video essay "Identity: A Trans Coming out Story."¹ Second, the inextricability of the self and the social is foundational to autotheoretical thought and, just as autotheory might operate as a mode of reshaping the self, it might also work to reshape our social worlds. Because of autotheory's necessary investment in thinking the self alongside externally circulating theoretical work, autotheory constitutes a viable method for reshaping social relations and exploring alternate modes of being in community, as demonstrated in Ts Madison's "Bitch Im Black."² Third, autotheory's historical significance in the production of trans knowledges establishes autotheory's usefulness with respect to knowledge production overall. In the final section of this article, I sketch a genealogy of autotheory and its centrality to transgender studies, highlighting Natalie Wynn's video essay "Autogynephilia" as a case study that uses autotheory as a method for producing trans knowledge.³ Throughout, I consider the YouTube video essay as an important and emergent cultural form, the mechanics of which demand the union of expert knowledge and artistic practice. In treating video essays with the same care as experimental literature or scholarship, I further one of autotheory's central insights: that theory comes in many forms, including those not recognized or validated by reigning academic norms.

Autotheorizing the trans self

In 2012, I survived an act of violence that forced me to rethink the assumptions I had made about my safety and the livability of my life. For most of my life I tried very hard to be a straight white man. When I realized I couldn't hack it I tried very hard to be a gay man. But in 2012, I started to question that effort. While many narratives of transness begin with a childhood certainty of one's gender, my experience was characterized by a refusal to acknowledge any kind of trans desire. I lived a version of what Grace Lavery calls "egg theory," a style of reasoning employed by the pre-transition subject (an "egg" in trans slang) to convince themselves transition is impossible.⁴ While Lavery's egg plays complicated logic games concerning the viability of transition, my psychological defense mechanism was much simpler: disavowal. I don't want that. And it's wrong to want that. People like that have hard lives and I should be grateful that I am not one of them.

In 2012, my resolve was crumbling. As an undergraduate at nyu, I took Gayatri Gopinath's introductory class on gender and sexuality...