Jack Halberstam: A Short History of the Trans* Body in Visual Culture

The category of trans* takes the prefix for transitivity and couples it with the asterisk that indicates a wildcard in internet searches; it is a diacritical mark that poses a question to its prefix and stands in for what exceeds the politics of naming. To investigate trans* representation is also to propose that something within trans* representations exceeds the framing of transgenderism. By looking at trans* materials, we can see what is gained and what remains unpredictable about the popular embrace of transgender bodies, or some of them, and transgender representations.