Can the Monster Speak? Ventriloquism and Voice in Trans Activist Life Writing

Abstract

This chapter examines Paul B. Preciado’s use of life writing as a means of producing cultural memory about trans peoples’ encounters with the mental health profession. Using the framework of testimonial injustice developed by Miranda Fricker, it argues that Preciado’s 2020 book Can the Monster Speak? is an example of life writing that seeks to reposition trans people as holders of knowledge about gender and sexuality who have been wronged by the medical profession’s use of pathologising discourses that designate trans desires and subjectivities as illnesses requiring treatment. The chapter examines Preciado’s use of the aesthetic strategies of intertextuality and ventriloquism to narrate and contest the position of trans people as patients. It closely reads Preciado’s sustained interweaving of the characters and themes of the writing of Franz Kafka with the figure of the monster, which has a rich history in trans life writing and theory. The chapter shows how life writing can be a means of producing cultural memory from a subjugated position, in this case by repositioning trans subjects from having a place within the history of medical discourse as patients to being agents of memory who narrate the complex history of interactions between trans people and the medical profession.