Transcorporeal Technobodies, Sensory Organisms: Recovering Nature in Trans Poetics

Abstract

Under the dominant nature-human binary, trans individuals are rejected from both categories on the grounds of their technologized embodiment. Contemporary trans poetic works, including Jos Charles’ Feeld, reject this dualism through its poetic form and Middle English dialect in order to recover access to both nature and the body. Taking a multidisciplinary approach across trans, ecological, and media theory, with particular attention to the subfields of transecology and somatechnics, this paper argues that technology and nature are compatible, not mutually exclusive. Feeld—which embraces a “natural,” embodying technology—is set in stark contrast with Titane, a recent horror film that manifests the violence inherent in “unnatural” technology. A varied approach of textual analysis and applied theoretical frameworks draws on Stryker, Butler, Haraway, and Kristeva, among others. A trans ethic emerges as an urgent and imperative path to recovering the body alongside the label of naturalness.