How I Became the Man I Had Always Been: Narrating the Self in Recent English and German Life Writing by Trans Men

TY - JOUR

T1 - How I Became the Man I Had Always Been

T2 - Narrating the Self in Recent English and German Life Writing by Trans Men

AU - Gratzke, Michael

N1 - Publisher Copyright: # The Author(s) 2025.

PY - 2025/2/25

Y1 - 2025/2/25

N2 - The literary corpus of this article consists of twenty-first-century life writing by trans men in the United States, Canada and Germany. The books fall broadly into two categories in line with Ruth Pearce’s distinction between trans-as-condition and trans-as-movement. A series of close readings uses Christa Binswanger and Andrea Zimmermann’s notion of palimpsestic queer subjectivity and Paul B. Preciado’s somatheque (trans body-as-archive) to highlight the commonalities of and differences between these two groups. This article concludes that any interpretation of trans people’s narratives needs to account for the position that the transition narrative is assigned in the text. Some writers go into great detail to create a coherent and comprehensive lifespan account, others focus on key episodes and yet another group, more commonly on the side of trans-as-movement, avoid autobiographical depth in favour of a focus on the near present in its social and political contexts.

AB - The literary corpus of this article consists of twenty-first-century life writing by trans men in the United States, Canada and Germany. The books fall broadly into two categories in line with Ruth Pearce’s distinction between trans-as-condition and trans-as-movement. A series of close readings uses Christa Binswanger and Andrea Zimmermann’s notion of palimpsestic queer subjectivity and Paul B. Preciado’s somatheque (trans body-as-archive) to highlight the commonalities of and differences between these two groups. This article concludes that any interpretation of trans people’s narratives needs to account for the position that the transition narrative is assigned in the text. Some writers go into great detail to create a coherent and comprehensive lifespan account, others focus on key episodes and yet another group, more commonly on the side of trans-as-movement, avoid autobiographical depth in favour of a focus on the near present in its social and political contexts.

KW - somatheque

KW - queer

KW - body as archive

KW - life writing

KW - autobiography

KW - Trans

KW - transition

KW - transgender

KW - palimpsestic subject

KW - trans

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105009357030

U2 - 10.1093/fmls/cqaf004

DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqaf004

M3 - Article

SN - 0015-8518

VL - 61

SP - 13

EP - 32

JO - Forum for Modern Language Studies

JF - Forum for Modern Language Studies

IS - 1

ER -