Cis Gaze and Its Others

The first comprehensive theory of "the cis gaze" from a leading public intellectual, including close readings of the work of trans artists, musicians, and filmmakersTo be trans is to be seen through the cis gaze. To be trans is to develop tactics for appearing in and against the cis gaze, to avoid, evade, or exploit it. To be trans is to be an artist of appearances—to develop the art of both seeing and appearing.In addition to the male gaze, the white gaze, and the colonial gaze, there is the gaze that polices and imbues the world with normative models of gender and is anxious about deviations from it. This book genders our understanding of the aesthetics and politics of vision by seeking to learn from trans artists who occupy the cis gaze while responding to it creatively and critically in their art.By engaging with the work of Derek Jarman, the Wachowski sisters, Vaginal Davis, Greer Lankton, Juliana Huxtable, and other notable queer and trans artists, McKenzie Wark recasts questions of modernity, technology, and violence. The first substantive collection of English writings to map the cosmology of trans artistic and creative practices from the twentieth century to today, The Cis Gaze and its others grounds a distinctive theory of subjectivity, perception, and freedom, tracing the loops of what Wark terms the "Möbius strip" of gender.