Shimmering: The Main Argument and the Theoretical Stakes

Shimmering
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Shimmering
Main Argument
In the book Shimmering Images, Steinbock (2019) kicks off the blocks by mentioning how people have variously addressed her because she is gender-queer. She also sees herself as having several versions of identity. For instance, she views herself as a transvestite, and someone who believes that nonbinary trans love is something open to interpretation (Steinbock, 2019). The search for identity leads the author to introduce the concept of shimmering images to describe the persistent vision of trans as change. She also depicts shimmering images as a force that, through different means and ways, achieves change. To lend strength to the argument, the author reins in cinema, embodiment, and the aesthetics of change. As such, the author comes up with the hypothetical question of whether there are potential relations between cinema and trans embodiment.
The author contends that film and trans embodiment relate both positively and negatively. For instance, she asserts that a violent moment of physical disclosure is staged by a filmic reveal. This considerably undermines how trans characters understand themselves. Through the filmic reveal, a struggle over the meaning of the body is revealed. The trans always loses the struggle. In addition, the author argues that shimmering images present the perspective that transgender and cinematic aesthetics function through the technological principle of disjunction. The other aspect of the relationship between film and embodiment is that approaching the latter through film diverts the emphasis on the difference between gender and sex through aesthetics.
Theoretical Stakes
One of the theories at stake in the book shimmering images is transgender. According to the author, film elicits modes of perceiving disjunctions that are advantageous to trans studies. This is ...