Toward a cinematic transtopia

Abstract

Has Chinese independent cinema begun to foster a discursive space – or what Howard Chiang calls a transtopia – where trans identity, subjectivity, and agency can be debated, discussed, and reconfigured? In this article, I conduct a close analysis of The Rib (Zhang Wei, 2019). Under the current conditions of Chinese independent filmmaking, which have rendered trans self-representation nearly invisible, The Rib presents an option of how a visible space can still be fostered. The Rib can be considered a collaborative creation between a cisgender male director, two cisgender male actors, a gender nonbinary activist, and a community of trans people in a district in Tangshan dominated by Protestant moral conservatism. By representing themselves and their friends on screen, these creators draw our attention not to the way they come face-to-face with those social inscriptions that seek to overdetermine their subjectivization. What emerges in this film, I argue, is a form of care and kinship and a potential space for knowledge coproduction between cis and trans creators and activists. It also puts into question how trans (plural) and their studies are often mapped onto and rewritten by what Fredric Jameson calls the cultural logic of late capitalism.