ABSTRACT

This chapter presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book aims critically to engage with contested sites in the field of transgender theory as it interacts with feminist and queer theory. It argues that examining the multiple and various ways in which these complex bodies of knowledge encounter, challenge, and inform each other entails confronting the rifts that mark those encounters as difficult. The book shows how attending to responses to the rifts, however partial or provisional, helps to create a map of some of the differences and divisions between and among trans, queer, and non-trans feminist theorists. It addresses an enduring theoretical and political debate that seeks to ground difference in either nature or cultural debate that is not attached to any particular group, but that has implications for the appreciation of differences in general, including those of gender identity and embodiment.