ABSTRACT
There has been a renewed emphasis on the relational character of identity, between people as well as between people and things, and on the constitutive power of cultural performance as an ongoing process of objectification and embodiment. As anthropologists have long argued - although they have equally been prone to forget these same arguments when it comes to gender - there are cultural worlds in which identity is premised on the basis of holism rather than duality, and where transactions between persons are conceptualized in terms of complementarity and encompassment. In early anthropological writings focusing on the Native American berdache, various forms of transgendering, including cross-dressing, were often referred to as ‘transvestism’. Garber’s transvestite figure inhabits a cultural world where identity, including sex and gender, is premised on dualism and where transactions between persons are conceptualized in terms of opposition and distinction.
