Obscurity and Gender Resistance in Patricia Duncker'sJames Miranda Barry.
Since his death in 1865, military surgeon James Barry has alternately been classified as a cross-dressing woman or as an intersexed individual. Patricia Duncker's novelJames Miranda Barry (1999)poses an important challenge to such readings, as it does not reveal any foundational truth about Barry's sex. Resting on obscurity rather than revelation, the text frustrates the desire to know the past in terms of gender binaries and stable sexual identity categories. Drawing on feminist and queer theorisations of the relation between gender and time, this essay demonstrates that Duncker's use of obscurity opens up alternative strategies of gender resistance.
Jana
J
Funke
James Barry; Patricia Duncker; feminist theory; gender; queer history; queer time; sexuality; transgender