GENRE, GENERIC, TRANS: THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE THROUGH ITS THIRD DISRUPTING TERM: TRANSGENRE, BY AARON HAMMES.

Abstract

This review discusses and presents the book TransGenre, written by Aaron Hammes, from Case Western Reserve University. The work proposes to consider literary genre in relation to social gender. The transgenre phenomenon-label guides the reflection through its limits, potentialities, agencies ("speech acts"), and prohibitions. The concept of a minor literary genre is also questioned and considered based on its merits and borderline relationships, which allow for the reconstruction and questioning of the discursive conformations that affect individual and social subjectivities and agencies. Despite the contested aspect in which they are situated, minor literatures are not necessarily emergent or aim to consolidate themselves in relation to adjacent standards previously consecrated. The point is not to be inscribed in or to reconfigure tradition, but rather to address and instrumentalize the politics and the epistemologies that simultaneously oppress and empower subjects and discourses. Minor genre and their corresponding literature can activate transgenre(gender), altering discursive structures, and re-conforming statements, discourses, and subjectivities. Reforming and transgressing are part of the transgenre phenomena that displace and reallocate the radical politics of determination and self-determination.

KEYWORDS: Genre; Literature; Feminism; Language; Culture.