Abstract

Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife attempts to stage the life of a unique trans woman, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who lived through Nazi occupation and Communist-era Berlin, during which time she built and maintained a beloved collection of antiques. This article will suggest that Charlotte’s queerness might be found not only in her trans status but also in her remarkable relationship with the objects of her collection. Charlotte’s privileging of the objects in her life seems to disrupt ontological hierarchies at the same time as she disrupts gender categories. Object-oriented ontology – the radically non-anthropocentric shift made visible via Charlotte’s performance – manifests as a queer ecology in the play, one with implications for how we understand the ecological place of the human in the world.

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