Hauntings of Longing: A Mad Trans Autoethnographic Poetic Transcription
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Hauntings of
Longing: A Mad
Trans
Autoethnographic
Poetic Transcription
Recommended citation:
Cosantino, J. (2021, March). Hauntings of longing: A mad trans autoethnographic poetic transcription.
[Virtual conference session]. Moving Trans History Forward Conference.
HELLO!
I am Jersey Cosantino
Gender Pronouns: they/them/theirs
I am a doctoral student in Cultural Foundations of Education at
Syracuse University focusing on Mad Studies and Trans Studies.
You can contact me at jcosanti@syr.edu
2
The Journey of this Brief Poetic Presentation
1. Content Introduction (1 minute)
2. Influences (1 minute)
3. Poetic Reading (~11 minutes)
4. Networking Table: I’ll be available to discuss my methodology
and areas of tension in writing at the intersections of my Mad
and trans identities
3
1. Content Introduction
Content Introduction
by Poem: 4. Access: mental
health facilities,
1. Traces: mental In the late 1980s and 1990s, feminists developed medical industrial
health facilities the practice of trigger warnings to give people a complex
heads-up before details of violence were spoken
out loud. We weren’t engaging in censorship or
avoiding contentious issues, as some academics 5. Release: gender
2. Pieces: suicidal and activists claim today. Rather we knew that dysphoria, mental
ideation, without trigger warnings many of us would lose health facilities, group
institutionalization and access to conversations, communities, and therapy, profanity
psychiatric holds, learning spaces.
-Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection:
crisis lifelines, Grappling With Cure, 2017, p. xix
profanity
3. Diagnosis: gender
dysphoria, therapy
5
2. Influences
Key Influences in Constructing a Mad Trans Poesis
▫ Phil Smith’s (2020) chapter, “[R]evolving Towards Mad: Spinning Away
from the Psy/Spy-Complex Through Auto/Biography”
▫ Gordon’s (2008) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
▫ Aisha S. Durham’s (2014) Home with Hip Hop Feminism
▫ C. Riley Snorton’s (2017) Black on Both Sides
▫ Piepzna-Samarasinha’s (2015) Bodymap
▫ Jasbir Puar’s (2017) The Right to Maim
▫ Audre Lorde’s (1984) “Poetry is Not a Luxury” from Sister Outsider
▫ Kai Cheng Thom’s (2019) I Hope We Choose Love
▫ Eli Clare’s (2017) Brilliant Imperfection
▫ Liam Lair’s (2016) Disciplining Diagnoses: Sexology, Eugenics, and Trans*
Subjectivities
7
3.
Poetry Reading
The complete, published version
of these poems can be found in
the upcoming issue of Disability
Studies Quarterly.
[Not for circulation, so please no screenshots]
Recommended citation for the poems that follow:
Cosantino, J. (in press). Hauntings of longing:A Mad autoethnographic poetic transcription.
Disability Studies Quarterly.
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 12
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 13
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 14
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 15
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 18
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 19
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 20
Jersey Cosantino, DSQ, 2021 21
4. Methodology and Areas of Tension
When paired together, these texts prove the power of poetry to “hint at
possibility made real. Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves,
what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into accordance
with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors” (Lorde, 1984, p.
39).
Image Credit: Nelleke Pieters
23Given this context, when engaging in a fully embodied
autoethnographic reflective process that explores the hidden
crevices of my Mad and trans identities, I found myself, as
researcher,
uncovering my fears,
hopes, and terrors
in ways that defy
the boundaries
of sanist forms
of knowledge production
and narration.
\ Image Credit: JOLENE LAI’s “A
24
Quiet Place”Thus, I consider this piece a form of
poetic transcription for my
self-interviews, as presented in the
poems that follow, necessarily utilize
“[t]the malleability of language...to
carve interpretive space and use
literary tools to craft a concrete,
embodied text grounded in lived
experience” (Durham, 2014, p. 105).
25This Mad trans poesis “moves back and forth...between the public and
private realms” (Denzin, 2003, p. 88) in an attempt to convey the illusive
intricacies and hauntings (Gordon, 2008) of my Mad and trans felt-sense
experiences.
It is within these experiences where tension is born for I have had to silence my Mad identities to gain
access to gender affirming care (which I recognize is a privilege). These poems begin to cultivate space
where these identities can begin to merge and speak to and through one another in a perpetual process of
becoming...
Image Credit: JOLENE LAI’s “Away”
26The complete
version of the
poems you heard
today can be found
in the upcoming
June, 2021 issue of
Disability Studies
Quarterly. Thank You!
Any questions?
Please feel free to contact me, Jersey Cosantino, at
jcosanti@syr.edu with any further questions.
You can find me at the Networking Table as well.
27References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Gender Dysphoria. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
https://doi-org.libezproxy2.syr.edu/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596.dsm14
Burstow, B. (2013). A rose by any other name: Naming and the battle against psychiatry. In B. A. L., R. M., & G. R. (Eds.), Mad matters: A critical reader in Canadian Mad
Studies (pp. 79-90). Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.
Clare, E. (2017). Brilliant imperfection: Grappling with cure. Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822373520-212
Denzin, N. K. (2003). Performance ethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. Sage.
Durham, A. (2014). At Home with Hip Hop Feminism: Performances in Communication and Culture. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1382-6
Dyson, M. E. (2018). Keyser Söze, Beyoncé, and the whiteness protection program. In DiAngelo, R., White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism
(ix-xii) [Foreword]. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Gordon, A. F. (2008). Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lair, L. O. (2016). Disciplining diagnoses: Sexology, eugenics, and trans* subjectivities (Order No. 10129514). Available from GenderWatch; ProQuest Dissertations &
Theses Global. (1799673978). https://search-proquest-com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/docview/1799673978?accountid=14214
28References
Lorde, A. (1984). “Poetry is Not a Luxury.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley: Crossing Press. 36-39.
Mingus, Mia. “Medical Industrial Complex Visual.” Leaving Evidence (blog), February 6, 2015.
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/medical-industrial-complex-visual/.
Minh-Ha, T. T. (2009). Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism.
Indiana University Press.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2015). Bodymap. Mawenzi House. Toronto,
Ontario.
Price, M. (2014). Mad at school: Rhetorics of mental disability and academic life. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.1612837
Puar, J. K. (2017). The right to maim: Debility, capacity, disability. Durham: Duke University Press.
Smith, A. D. (2015). Fires in the Mirror. Anchor.
Smith P. (2020) [R]evolving Towards Mad: Spinning Away from the Psy/Spy-Complex Through Auto/Biography. In: Parsons J., Chappell A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook
of Auto/Biography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi-org-443.webvpn.zisu.edu.cn/10.1007/978-3-030-31974-8_16
29References
Snorton, C. R. (2017). Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9781517901721.001.0001
Thom, K. C. (2019). I hope we choose love: A tran’s girl’s notes from the end of the world. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press.
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