Abjection, Monstrosity, Substitutability: Reading Blackness and Gender in Orlando, My Political Biography and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

Abstract

This article places Orlando, My Political Biography (Preciado 2023) and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves 1968) in conversation to illuminate how Black femme subjects interrupt, play with, and distort notions of abjection within the monstrous-feminine. The analysis of Orlando focuses on the modalities of exchange inherent in the experience of trans subjects and the mythical zone of exception that Black trans femininity occupies in the film. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm’s departure point takes the film’s final frame—which depicts a Black woman’s ajar mouth—as a departure point for theorizing the oral, aural, and embodied elements of Black women’s affect. Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine helps explain and explore how Black femme subjects face substitutability in the cinematic medium. Pulling Symbio out of the archive serves to address Black directors' representations of silenced and anonymized women, while reading the racial dynamics of Orlando allows for a critical application of Black trans feminism to the Spanish film canon.