Book Review by Lava Schadde

Reviews

Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini’s book Gender Without Identity (2023) brings into dialogue psychoanalysis with trans and queer, gender and sexuality (TQGS) studies. For someone like me, working mainly in philosophy and TQGS studies and fascinated by the differing (dis)avowal of identity in these fields, the title of the book sparked my interest—what might it mean, I wondered, for the question of gender identity to be raised instead at the intersection of TQGS studies and psychoanalysis?

Rights of Passage by Isaac Slone

Essays

In the elementary school common room, boys congregated in one area, and girls congregated in another. I stood in the middle, grappling with a painful sense of disconnection. Folding in with either group was impossible. I was alone in noticing the binary division.

© Daniel Derderian

A VISUAL ESSAY ON OTHERNESS by Daniel Derderian

Art

I want to stay a little naïve and desperately in touch with my emotions rather than become anxious and angry. It’s not easy to understand society at this moment. It’s not easy to be reassured when “fake’ is a new derivative of reality. It’s not easy to trust people when power games go beyond understandable limits, and when polarization is more recognizable than union in diversity. It’s not easy to stay in touch with your own nature during a pandemic and other natural disasters… But I’m trying.

Photo by Anna Sastre

WHAT THE Q by Brian Kloppenberg

Essays

There was a time when I thought that two words—gay and lesbian— and therefore two letters—g and l— sufficed. I now know—in fact I think I always did—that the words gay and lesbian never really did justice to the exceedingly complex variability…