Gender in Linear and Nonlinear History

Abstract

In response to Helen Gediman's notion of premodern, modern, and postmodern eras in the study of gender, an argument is made for a nonlinear approach to this history and for situating it in the context of other historical developments—social, personal, intellectual, and institutional. Differences among modern and postmodern positions in the matter of the role of the body and of social construction are discussed. The impact of transgender and intersex communities and voices on psychoanalytic thinking is examined, as are the elements of intergenerational transmission of trauma on gender experience both conscious and unconscious.