Two or so years ago in the process of having my political mind entirely changed forever by reading Giorgio Agamben’s brilliant Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, I came across a lively section on the archetypal wolf-man, or werewolf. Agamben’s thesis in the book is essentially that, since Enlightenment thought and the construction of statehood as a rational institution subject to a code of normative ethics, sovereign state power has been based upon the principle of “exception.” The individual subject is theorized in Enlightenment political literature as being the result of the imposition of a political structure upon a natural “bare life.” Agamben counters this top-down theory by proposing that “nature” or “bare life” only becomes intelligible through the apparatus of sovereignty. The “natural” that lingers outside of the polity or municipality is always already formulated within state terms. The “state of exception”, popularized in World War II era by political scientist Carl Schmitt, is the concept of an emergency structure put in place, outside and beyond the written law, in particular situations (a recent example would be George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s suspension of international human rights laws, through torture and unjust imprisonment, in the name of defending “freedom” in wartime.) Agamben’s theory postulates, however, that state sovereignty is always already a state of exception: “rights,” as the bedrock of law, are always constructed by and “enforced” by the same powers that are supposedly equally subject to them. Thus state power is always already “outside” rights and the law. The rights that are based in “nature” and the natural sovereignty of the individual are codified by state power. The state is thus a liminal between-space, with nature and the political not as two poles but as between and within each other.

Agamben illustrates this theory with the archetype of the werewolf. The werewolf acts as a symbol of state sovereignty as the threshold between bios and nomos, between nature and the political. “It is a threshold of indistinction and of passage between animal and man, physis and nomos, exclusion and inclusion: the life of the bandit is the life of the loup garou, the werewolf, who is precisely neither man nor beast, and who dwells paradoxically within both while belonging to neither.” The werewolf embodies the concept of liminality upon which state sovereignty is founded. Pretty cool, right? I realize I spent more time explaining Agamben’s central thesis than on the werewolf paradox, but it’s something to consider when thinking about the ways in which (fictional and nonfictional bodies) are simultaneously “natural” and continent/political. 

As a child, people often asked me or my parents where we were from. Was I Iranian? Jewish? French? In eighth grade a boy told me I had “negroid” eyes, and for most of my adolescence I was mocked for having a “ghetto booty.” Last summer while in a thrift store near D.C. a complete stranger, a white middle aged man, approached me and asked in deliberately slow English if I was from Honduras. A former boyfriend once commented on the fact that I was not “pale” when naked in winter. I live in a mixed neighborhood with many Central American immigrants, and have been addressed in Spanish on a few occasions.

To most people, I assume that I appear white. I have brown hair, black/brown eyes, and an “olive” complexion. I consider myself to be on the pale side of this “olive”, paler than most of my father’s family at least.

I am of North African/Tunisian, Sicilian, and “Black” Irish decent. None of these categories have been deemed pure “white” by historically racist notions of U.S. “whiteness.” I am not a WASP. I have often wondered if I had blonde hair and blue eyes if people would ask where I’m from on a monthly basis. I gets worse in the summer as I do tan very quickly. But, if I was clearly white, of no curious or “exotic” background, would strangers feel as comfortable violating my personal space? It’s as if my height, skintone, and eye color are an accent – one to be met with “Where are you from?” My cousin, who like most of the women in my family, has very curly hair, was called a “mulatto” all through high school. We have all learned to laugh this off. We eat ravioli, my grandmother travels to Sicily frequently, we know where we are from. And yet, of all the assumptions strangers have made regarding my or my family’s ethnicity, Arab is never one of them. If we all wore headscarves perhaps our “origins” would be more apparent, more clearly marked. After 9/11 some of my friends would joke about my father getting pulled over due to racial profiling, and I would laugh with them.

So after years of being hailed as less white than my white friends I decided that I am not. I am not entirely white. A few years ago when the U.S. census came to my apartment, I had to check off my ethnicity. While “Other” seemed the best choice for me other than “White”, I noticed that there was no “Arab” choice. “African American/Black” was available, but many North Africans are not black. Most are Arab or Berber. Although Arabs constitute a large number of the world’s population, covering North africa and Western Asia, as a people or race they are simply invisible in the United states. So unwanted as to not be counted. I checked every single box and handed it back to the census worker.

http://youtu.be/8EQ_-irO50w

So I came across this video when someone posted it on Facebook a few months ago. The video is a clip of a newscast about women who have experienced orgasms during child birth. The idea of experiencing pleasure during a process that has been portrayed to be the most painful thing a woman can go through is strange and confusing to me. How can birth be so painful to some women, but pleasurable to the point of an orgasm to other women?
    My first reaction was that I was sort of grossed out when I thought about the idea of my own mother having an orgasm while she birthed me. My mother actually had an awful experience with labor, she was given too many drugs accidentally, causing her to lose all feeling in her body. If my mom and other pregnant women could have better experiences I am all for it. About 99% of births in the U.S. are not in a hospital, yet we rank 28th in the world in infant mortality. The hospital setting is no more safe than home births. So why not have a birthing plan that allows you to be in the comfort of your own home, and possibly give you an orgasm? Of course, pregnancies with complications need to be more monitored and may possibly require a hospital birth.
    Ultimately, these are personal decisions that need to be made by each pregnant woman for herself. I still think it is a bit strange to get pleasure from the baby leaving the birth canal, but that is just my opinion.

Most people spend years and years trying to figure out who they truly are. What if you didn’t need decades to figure it out? What if you knew since the age of 11 or even sooner that what you were born into was not fitting of who you were supposed to be. The transition from male to female or female to male (transgenderism) that an increasing amount of individuals are beginning to make has become an uncomfortable and extremely controversial subject for many. Most people see black and white and fall on either end of the spectrum as far as right or wrong goes concerning transgenderedness. These positions become all the stronger however, when children are involved.

The documentary, Jazz: A Family in Transition, and supplementary articles about this courageous kid raised a few questions for me. As much as I value individualism and seeking happiness, when should someone be allowed to have control of their own body? 18 is the official age when an individual can provide legal consent to make important decisions especially life altering ones without parental permission.  But as a parent when do you allow your child to make decisions regarding their identity, appearance, and ultimately their life. Jazz’s parents not only allow her to dress as girl but they have also considered actions for a more permanent changed and have shared her story with the world all of which will impact her for the long run.

Another part of the article that I found interesting was the excerpt regarding the special box of hand -me down bras that Jazz keeps in hopes of one day being able to fill them out with breasts of her own. Though Jazz has already assumed the female gender role, it is interesting to see how the physical features matter. Something such as breasts not only affect Jazz’s self concept, but it also affects the way that others will perceive her and her gendered roles in society.

As Jazz is rapidly approaching puberty, her and her parents now face the question as to whether or not begin Jazz on hormones and hormone therapy to offset the male traits that she would encounter ones puberty starts. As with most medications, there are side effects, many of which can be extremely harsh especially for children. The fact that medications, and hormone therapy is a very real reality for Jazz and her family is intriguing. Unlike many transgendered individuals, Jazz has the support of her family and is able to dress and act accordingly to the gender that she identifies with even at such a young age. The fact that her and her family are strongly considering these possibilities despite all of the ways it can affect her body for the worse is interesting. Though Jazz already assumes the role of female, it seems as though she won’t feel complete until the physical matches up to the socially constructed definition of what a woman is.

http://janetmock.com/2011/11/25/i-am-jazz-transgender-jeanette-documentary/

to see the documentary, enter I am Jazz: A Family In Transition into the Youtube search