In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives by J. Jack Halberstam

In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives Reviews

• 
  lia

  At my library, when something is checked out, you can 'request' it. which essentially means that who ever has it, has to bring it back before they were planning to. Since faculty and staff here can check out a book for a year, books get 'requested' a lot. I do it, and it gets done to me. I had to do so with this book, and when I went to pick it up, the girl at the circ desk, said, 'oh YOU'RE the one'. Meaning I was the one who requested the book, and it just so happened, I had requested it away from her! The reason I'm mentioning it is she asked, when I was checking the book out, if I had ready anything else by Halberstam, and I said yes, and that I thought she was amazing. She then looked at me and said, 'she's scary' and I must have had a strange look on my face then, because next she said 'scary smart'. Exactly. She is scary smart. If you pick this up and it just seems like too much, I say go ahead and skip around. It's what I did when I got overwhelmed, and it worked just fine for me. Chapter seven chronicles (among many things) queer subculture and punk--so if nothing else that chapter, and the ones on film are not to be missed.
• 
  Bookish Bethany

  A brilliant book I read as an undergraduate - where I first encountered queer studies in my critical theory class. I remember the impact it had on me and my writing, it's a succinct book, blusteringly intelligent - it really questions the canvases of gender we use in popular culture, and how many of the things we believed were straight and narrow are queer as heck. An enjoyable read, if you're into theory.
• 
  Joe S

  This book does what I expect from a good scholarly essay -- prompts some compelling lines of thought, whets my appetite for more and gives a satisfying bibliography for my own exploration. Unfortunately, it does little of what I expect from a good scholarly book, which is mucking around hardcore with one sustained argument until I feel like we've skullf****d it good and proper.
  
  It's a collection of (loosely) related essays. *shrug* Pretty decent as essays go, with the sideways thinking, sharp insights and wit that make me hot for Halberstam. I just wish she'd written a book book and seen a few of her more compelling ideas (rural queers, queer v. repro time) all the way through to the bitter end.
• 
  Michael

  Some notes:
  
  In A Queer Time and Place (2005), Judith Halberstam offers an analysis of temporality and geography regarding queer texts. She offers that we should "try to think about queerness as an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic practices," in order to "detach queerness from sexual identity and come closer to understanding Foucault's comment in 'Friendship as a Way of Life' that 'homosexuality threatens people as a 'way of life' rather than as a way of having sex'" (1). Using "queer" to refer to "nonnormative logics," Halberstam understands queer temporality as imagining futures outside of the logics of "family, inheritance, and child rearing" (6, 2).
  
  Halberstam also understands transgender bodies "as a contradictory site in postmodernism," which is situated in postmodern and neoliberal notions of flexible bodies (18). She explores the archive around Brandon Teena to explore notions of space and locality, questioning traditional queer narratives of progress from homophobic rural settings to open and safe urban settings. Brandon's story helps to "reveal the desire shared by many midwestern queers for a way of staying rather than leaving" (27). She also explores images of transgender people in film.
  
  Chapter Five explores "technotopias," where Halberstam "trace[s:] the collision of postmodern space and postmodern embodiment in a technotopic aesthetic, or one that tests technological potentialities against the limits of the human body anchored in time and space, and that powerfully reimagines the relations between the organic and the machine, the toxic and the domestic, the surgical and the cosmetic" (103). Technotopic images, Halberstam argues, "resist idealizations of bodily integrity, on the one hand, and rationalizations of its disintegration, on the other; instead, they represent identity through decay, detachability, and subjectivity" (124).
  
  Chapter Seven returns to queer temporality, arguing that queer subcultures question the conventional narratives of adulthood, breaking down lines between adolescent and adulthood and extending adolescence longer (152-153). She argues that "Queer subcultures encourage blurred boundaries between archivists and producers" (162) and that archives are not just repositories, but also constructions of memory and theories of relevance (169-170).
• 
  Ann

  Pretty good. I really enjoyed Halberstam's archive on Brandon Teena, and also appreciated the effort that went into re-thinking rural queer lives from the usual restrictive, homophobic viewpoint that urban scholars usually approach it. The section on Austin Powers and drag kings was great and imaginative.
  
  I haven't read too much into queer theory at this point, but I thought Halberstam's categorization of every gender non-conforming person as transgender was a bit odd. Why not use.....gender non-conforming? Maybe it's just me.
• 
  Linn

  I respect Halberstam a lot but this academic linguistic circlejerk is exhausting. I've gotten to the point where I roll my eyes on reflex whenever I see words like modality or posttemporal. Ridiculous.
• 
  Andi

  This book really inspired the transgender look/gaze in popular culture. It helped me see art in a different light.
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  Samu

  I didn't read the entire thing so I can't really give this book stars either. What I read, I did like and find interesting and thought-provoking.
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  Andrea

  I truly believe that abolishing gender per se is a much more useful strategy than favoring minority masculinities, which imply that a normative masculinity is nonetheless retained. The book overgeneralizes and is even sexist at certain points; certain references are very superficially explained and many of the key terms used throughout have not been properly defined. I was truly disappointed because I expected a lot from it based on the introduction, but the thesis postulated there hardly ever resurfaces in the book.
• 
  Talia

  I skimmed a lot of the middle chapters bc I was expecting it to be more about.... time?? like it was very good and had a lot of good stuff on place! just didn't feel like it was what was advertised since it was supposed to be about time AND space, not space and a little bit about time
• 
  Ninja Notion

  Just because I give it three stars out of five does not mean I didn't love it. It was the concepts I loved, not the writing. Because it's an academic book, it was slow going and plodding. Like all works written by some academics, the sentences can be dense and full of meaning that require multiple reads of the same sentence or paragraph. I hate having to look up words like liminal, preliminal, hegemony, deconstructionism, and postmodernism. It makes my head hurt. But look them up I did, if only to try to get inside the mind of Judith Halberstam, the author.
  
  Here is what I think she is saying and it's wonderfully trailblazing and original. In no particular order: First, she suggests that the queer way of life establishes an entirely unique, reasonable and freeing alternative to the tyranny of the heteronormative (look that one up) timeline of the mandatory passages that the heterosexual lifestyle requires: birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, marriage, career, children, grandchildren, old age, and finally death with all the attendant obligations, constraints, and rituals. An alter-normative life imposes no such constraints. Adolescence can last as long as you want. The ushering in of the age of child rearing doesn't have to happen until you are good and ready or never. That's the queer time part.
  
  Next, (well not quite next but I am going to talk about it next), she shows how the queer subculture, the ways we define ourselves in terms of music, dress, film, all forms of art and style, including the way we express ourselves in general, define the particular way that we construct the space and place, psychically and physically, around us. They are as real as the heteronormative popular culture that no one of us can escape. But the success of our art is not defined by conventional fame, celebrity, and money. She uses the world of transgenderism, genderqueerism, drag king shows, dyke slam poetry, and dyke rock to prove that point. These types of expression and lives could serve to represent an undefined and full of possibility midpoint between a threshold and the establishment of new rituals in our culture. A state where definition and space is undefined and being redefined.
  
  Lastly she pays homage to the queers of the mid 20th century and lesbian folk artists of the 70s who paved the way for the freedoms of expressions and rights (at least in some states and Canada) that queers enjoy today. Using the musicians Cris Williamson and Ferron as examples, she engendered in me a new appreciation for their music that I already love so much.
  
  The clod that I am, I'm sure I have missed the finer subtleties of her arguments. But what I did get out of the book completely captivated and fascinated me.
  
  Here are some choice quotes from the book that I particularly enjoyed:
  
  "...we create longevity as the most desirable future, applaud the pursuit of long life (under any circumstances), and pathologize modes of living that show little or no concern for longevity."
  
  "...formulaic responses to time and temporal logics produce emotional and even physical responses to different kinds of time...people feel guilty about leisure, frustrated by waiting, satisfied by punctuality, and so on."
  
  "...time has become a perpetual present, and space has flattened out in the face of creeping globalization."
  
  "...the transgender body has emerged as futurity itself, a kind of heroic fulfillment of postmodern promises of gender flexibility."
  
  "...Brandon [Teena]'s death...[is]...evidence of a continuing campaign of violence against queers despite the increasing respectability of some portions of the gay and lesbian community."
  
  "...the brutality that visited Brandon [Teena]...[was]...also a violence linked to a bourgeois investment in the economy of authenticity."
  
  "Entertainment...is the name we give to the fantasies of difference that erupt on the screen only to give way to the reproduction of sameness."
  
  "...gender functions as a 'copy with no original'."
  
  "...queer subcultures offer us an opportunity to redefine the binary of adolescence and adulthood..."
  
  "Queer youth sets up younger gays and lesbians not as the inheritors and benefactors of several decades of queer activism but rather as victims of homophobia who need 'outreach' programs and support groups...[There is] an emphasis that arises out of an overreliance on the youth/adulthood binary...[that]...encourages young queers to think about the present and future while ignoring the past."
  
  "The radical styles crafted in queer punk bands, slam poetry events, and drag king boy bands...model other modes of being and becoming that scramble our understandings of place, time, development, action and transformation."
  
  "Ferron...understands herself to be engaged in a collective project that is rewarded not by capital or visibility...but by an affective connection with those people who will eventually be the vessels of memory for all she now forgets."
• 
  Patricia

  I've been meaning to read In a Queer Time and Place for a while, both because of its significant influence within queer theory and, more recently, because I hope to work with Halberstam at USC. The book explores representations of transgender and queer bodies, looking at an expansive range of cultural texts from the 1990s--from fictionalized accounts of the murder of Brandon Teena to the influence of drag king culture on British comedies like Austin Powers to the archive of queercore music. Almost without exception, these readings struck me as dead-on, with the chapters on Brandon Teena as archive and on the transgender look in film the stand-outs in my mind.
  
  In the process, In a Queer Time and Place makes several significant theoretical interventions for queer theory, in particular in identifying queer time as oppositional to heteronormative reproductive time and in highlighting the need to recognize the existence of rural queerness in the face of what Halberstam terms the "metronormativity" of most mainstream narratives of gay life. Yet for me at least, these lines of argument became a bit hard to follow across the sprawling scope of the case studies. Overall, an important read--and for theory, surprisingly accessible--but definitely not for those without at least a passing familiarity with the queer and Marxist scholarship upon which Halberstam builds.
• 
  Sidewalk_Sotol

  This book puts as more questions into your head than it answers regarding media presentations of queer people and the production of queer-centric media. While academic, Halberstam does a reasonable job of making it accessible - at least to bachelor's degree-college-educated.
  
  Noteworthy is the chapters on framing of the Matthew Shephard story - the urbanized nature of middle class activist queers creates a bias in how we look at queer people who grew up in and remain in rural areas. Also, noteworthy is how Halberstam argues that queer masculinity has already emerged in pop culture via such films as "the Full Monty" and "Austin Powers" (the 1st movie mainly).
  
  Halberstam mentions, but does not address how race and class are also unconscious frames used o understand queer culture and are implicit in what is made and marketed as queer culture. Disappointing.
• 
  Mandy

  Super interesting, though far from perfect (particularly in regards to the urban bias that Halberstam admits to having, but that persists nonetheless). I read the first two chapters for a class months ago and just now, post-semester, found the time to finish it.
  
  Halberstam's definitions of queer time and queer space in chapter 1 were, for me and my research/"research," the most useful parts of this book. Subsequent chapters explore those topics in a lot of provocative and unexpected ways (Brandon Teena, abstract art, Austin Powers, drag kings, etc.). Halberstam's prose is also particularly engaging.
  
  Because queer studies is such a trendy area these days, the 2005 pub date makes this book a bit dated, but I still found it pertinent, useful, and fascinating.
• 
  Audrey

  halberstam's accessible writing and tangible examples are what i aspire to i think
  i mean, she brings up gap stretch fabric in terms of gender fluidity!
  
  queer lives inhabit queer space and time. the expectations of a long-term (hetero) monogomous relationship (marriage) effects the way people think about time - how long they have to do certain things, the risks they allow themselves to make.
  
  i thought i was going to use this book for a paper. that seems unlikely now, but i am still very happy to have read it.
• 
  Krista

  A really good use of queer theory in non-sexuality-based ways, looking at the queerness of time and place through a lens of trans-ness. Not simple reading, but very effectively done and an important part of a lot of the work I did in grad school.
  
  10/08 - I'm re-reading this book post-grad school to see what I think of it when it isn't assigned - when, in fact, I have no requisite reading. It is excellent, actually, better than I remembered and far more readable.
• 
  Mirrordance

  Ho faticato. Forse mi aspettavo qualcosa di differente, qualcosa meno focalizzato sulla lettura del genere nelle arti. Colgo, ma e' un mio limite, un profondo distacco tra teorizzazioni e vite vissute. Lontana dalle filosofie vivo. Leggo incuriosita ma rimango perplessa: colgo gli stimoli, ma continuo a interrogarmi. In fin dei conti non sono risposte quelle che cerco e forse, piano paiano, tutti i ontorni si definiranno od io accettero' questa miopia totale ed il vivere in un mondo sfocato.
  
• 
  John

  Halberstam is a big deal in queer circles. This isn't her biggest book, apparently, but it's a nice investigation of contemporary film and art and music. Some of the cultural products help to depict what transgender really looks like. Her discussions of how queer time and place are different from normative time and place were particularly poignant.
• 
  J

  Incredible and insightful. first chapter and the last chapter felt the most important and strongest! If you are interested in queer theory and/or art, this is a must read. Halberstam points to some key components of queerness that are so often overlooked and not spoken about (the impacts of space and temporality and locale). So good.
• 
  Pamela

  A fascinating collection of essays by Judith Halberstam on the fluidity of transgender identity. I found the chapters on Brandon Teena to be particularly interesting, and I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in queer theory or transgender/transsexuality.
• 
  Cait

  I really wanted to love this book, and it did have its interesting moments, but I felt like its attempt to straddle theory, art, and narrative ended up just weakening its footing in all three. I found her book of photographs of Drag Kings more illuminating than this one.
• 
  Megan

  argues for a queer time and space outside the logic of capital accumulation; explores the transgender body as the embodiment of postmodern subjectivity; looks at the culture that rose around brandon teena. AND MORE
• 
  Tina

  Judith Halberstam is one of the modern thinkers on sexuality and sexual identity that I respect and enjoy reading. This recent book of hers provides a coherent diverse look at transgender identity.
  A must-read as a companion to reading her other important work, Female Masculinity.
• 
  Daniel

  This book is fascinating and encouraging. Despite the occasional trip into Marxist postmodernist philosophy (in all its dismal prattle), Halberstam keeps the book upbeat, inspiring, and just a little bit sassy. I'm sad to return it to the library!
• 
  R.J. Gilmour

  My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused/confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation.
  Thom Gunn. A In Time of Plague (1993), 59, cited in Judith Halberstam, 2.
  
• 
  Steve

  This book is great.