The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

How to explain--"trans" may work well enough as a shorthand, but the quickly developing mainstream narrative it evokes ("born in the wrong body," necessitating an orthopedic pilgrimage between two fixed destinations) is useless for some--but partially, or even profoundly, useful for others? That for some "transitioning" may mean leaving one gender entirely behind, while for others--like Harry, who is happy to identify as a butch on T--it doesn't? How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? I do not want the female gender that has been assigned to me at birth. Neither do I want the male gender that transsexual medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. I don't want any of it. [Beatrix Preciado] How to explain that for some, or for some at some times, this irresolution is OK--desirable, even (e.g., "gender hackers")--whereas for others, or for others at some times, it stays a source of conflict or grief? How does one get across the best way to find out how other people feel about their gender or their sexuality--or anything else, really--is to listen to what they tell you, and try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours? 

Maggie Nelson's theory-memoir The Argonauts tells the story--peripatetic, looping--of her marriage to Harry Dodge, a non-binary sculptor and playwright, and the birth of their son, Iggy. The title refers to the ship Argo, which, according to myth, was rebuilt plank by plank, provoking the question: is the new ship the same as the old? And if not, when did the transition occur? The word transition makes the metaphor plain, but hides much of the nuance: Nelson dwells at length on the nature of bodies and identities that change in all sorts of ways, not just because of the presence of prescribed hormones, but because of the nature of aging and childbirth. For Nelson, the body is a site of indeterminacy and slippage, but this is one of its wonders. We want our gender roles, like our bodies, to be clear and coherent, but as she writes above, "the shit stays messy."

One of the peculiar things about The Argonauts, especially for a book that is relatively popular, is that it's absolutely dripping with theory: Lacan, Freud, Deleuze and Guattari, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, and many, many others. You might be forgiven for picking up and putting it down, thinking it pretentious, but to me, one of the marvels of The Argonauts is that it is anti-pretentious: by weaving the words of theorists into her own paragraphs and sentences--Nelson highlights them by italicizing, and places the names in the margin, even as her "borrowing" makes it clear that she speaking for herself with their voices--Nelson removes theory from the realm of the brain and claims it as a way of understanding her own body, her own husband, her own child. She's contemptuous of the trendy notion that our words are tragically incapable of conveying real truths; it may be true, but still they do much for us, and The Argonauts is clearly a book by someone for whom words are a mode of self-exploration.

One of the remarkable things about gender is that, even though it permeates our lives in ineradicable ways, we seem to be unable to talk about it. The conservative understanding is, as Nelson writes, like a child's drawing of a mommy and a daddy, all simple triangles and squares, but even thoughtful and accepting people have trouble being able to even say what gender is. I appreciated Nelson's attempt to mine the words of others to communicate her own experience, as a woman, as a pregnant body, as a lover, as a wife, etc., etc. But I appreciated, too, the honesty with which Nelson approaches the messiness of it all, and the way gender, like so much about our identities, refuses to be pinned down, like a butterfly to a board.