Obscurity and Gender Resistance in Patricia Duncker's James Miranda Barry

Since his death in 1865, military surgeon James Barry has alternately been classified as a cross-dressing woman or as an intersexed individual. Patricia Duncker's novel James Miranda Barry (1999) poses an important challenge to such readings, as it does not reveal any foundational truth about B...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Funke, Jana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Taylor & Francis 2012
Materias:
Research Article
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214389/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25400502
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2012.735410
Descripción
Sumario:Since his death in 1865, military surgeon James Barry has alternately been classified as a cross-dressing woman or as an intersexed individual. Patricia Duncker's novel James Miranda Barry (1999) poses an important challenge to such readings, as it does not reveal any foundational truth about Barry's sex. Resting on obscurity rather than revelation, the text frustrates the desire to know the past in terms of gender binaries and stable sexual identity categories. Drawing on feminist and queer theorisations of the relation between gender and time, this essay demonstrates that Duncker's use of obscurity opens up alternative strategies of gender resistance.

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