Jackie Kay Trumpet

Jackie Kay - Trumpet

Trumpet Theories

Lacan

Mark Stein - Jackie Kay, Trumpte. Life Border Writing

Irene Rose - Heralding New Possibilities; Female Masculinity in Jackie Kay's Trumpet

• Mark Stein - Jackie Kay, Trumpet. Life Border Writing
• •a concert of voices
• ochange of narrative mode
• onovel about deep secrets
• o“Joss’ss version of his life, that of his wife, and those of the people who surrounded them are not in congruence with each other” no truth
• oVoices = montage of different voices and tenses
• Millie’s 1st-person narrative
• Coleman’s 1st-person narrative
• Edith Moore…
• Others (summarized under ‘people’
• No supremacy of one voice (contradicts with Millie as dominant voice)
• •black feminist aesthetics?
• oWriting as communicative act between black British women (Kay) and readers
• oMEHR
• •jazz and the production of cultural authority
• omusical performance = also performative selfhood
• omusic transforms him
• technical term “running changes” signifying Joss’s “gender transformations”
• omusic as deconstructivist
• extinction of boundaries (Scotland/Africa, slavery/freedom, black/white, girl/man)
• oJoss = symbol of future personal freedom
• His look into the future and bare-stripping of everything in the jazz-chapter confirms what was told by other voices throughout the book
• Transcendence of Joss + self-abandoning in 1
• oMusic = cultural authority, jazz power to gain it (gender transformation, too)
• oHis death and inability to perform music undermine and damage his social life
• oSo “Trumpet is a question of how Joss’s created gender identity suits him AND who has the power over his memories
• Which cultural authority has the right on it? (journalism, biography, Jazz music, others (???)
• oJazz role
• “transcultural New World Art” mixing African, European, North American musical traditions
• mainly from blacks
• in “Trumpet”
• •“polyrhythmic” structures with “simultaneous soundings of interrelated rhytms”
• oCall-and-response pattern (as the life of Joss and Millie to society)
• oSyncopation
• Joss being quiet all his life
• Joss’s undermining of heteronormanist beliefs “sounds an unstressed note”
• •Jazz as alternative model
• oJoss has enough followers to make himself a believable man
• oColman has 2 options how to tell the story
• •Fantasy Africa
• oRelative absence of black woman’s voice
• oColman as link to Jackie Kay’s past
• oRenaming as symbol of broken link to the African continent
• oName change = masquerade
• oFantasy Africa = imagined community, not a blood-related one
• Jazz = one link
• oJoss’s letter as “concrete” link between Colman and himself
• identity as construction
• “real” Africa = unnecessary (parallel to gender identity blur issue)
• •Gender Trouble: perpetuation and performativity/summary
• o“Trumpet” intrigues reader into “performance”
• oPuts pressures on borders (gender, race, sexualities) and expands them
• Subversion done by Joss’s daily body performances + musical performances
• o “gender = always doing” (Butler) , a construction
• o“In the process he not only gains cultural authority, as has been seen; he also disturbs the regime that would govern his circumscription.”

Phallus = signifier

Calitz - Chapter Two: Jackie Kay's Trumpet

• Trumpet = "radical redelineation of phallic power and a reassertion of the validity of female nasculinity as a gendered abd sexual identification independent of both lesbianism and male masculinity (143)
• Trumpet = contribution to female masculinity athentication
• jazz analogy
• improvisations of themes, identity, and sexuality
• destabilization/fluidity/ambiguity of identity
• name changes
• gender = performance
• ends with Joss' death
• certain characters = symbols of heteronormativity (doctor,
• funeral director, registrar)
• the red pen = symbol of juvenile patriarchical phallus
• renaming = "African-American fight agaisnt 'white wash' of historical erasure"(146)
• ignorance of knowledge (Foucault, 146)/family secrets
• refusal of "lesbian" label = also a radical political label
• stone butch as forgotten extremes --> pass both heteronormative and homonormative boundaries
• stone butch = "non-performance" (Halbertstam, 150)
• idealization of Joss after death = prevention of marginalizing him ("being construed as a lack or void", 151)
• Sophie Stones
• = the heteronorm
• SS allusion (moral standards vs. own performance)
• Coleman
• identity crisis after Joss' death
• "herald of post-patriarchal gynandricity"(156)

Carla Rodriguez Gonzalez - Biographical Improvisation in Jackie Kay's Trumpet

• Kay’s text portrays transgender identity and exposes the social prejudice leveled against the transgender character in the novel.
• transphobia + homophobia
• Joss's gender performance undermines "obligatory" link gender-sex (of a black woman in 1960s/70s)
• unspeakability of Joss' difference (51)!!!!
• radical discrimination by different voice pieces!!!!!
• gender difference = always part of societal context
• Joss' gender transition empowers a new gender identity which defies prescriptions of society
• normative boy-/girl-binary destabilises gender identity (Joss)
• Millie's dominant anti-lesbianism voice deconstructs language binaries borders
• Millie's boundaries crossing love = acceptance of a gender identity which did not dominate the relationship
• love = different(neither heteronormative nor homonormative)
• vs. Millie's failure in admitting loving a "woman"
• Butler: --> Trumpet = NO lesbian novel
• Hargreaves: invisibility of their love threatens heteronormative standards!!!!(58)
• Butler:
• gender = repeated bodily acts (59)
• --> subversive characterof gender is in the unstable performances
• playing a gender identity = becoming this identity(61)
• gender as performative masquerade is subversive when it becomes integrated into the everyday performative!!! (61)
• --> Joss’s gender performances are therefore subversive because of their invisibility and the way the performative is integrated into Joss’s daily life (62)
• gender = primarily linked to body (63)

• music mirrors narrative structure
• music as "voice" of the dead character
• identity as "programmed"/performance (--> music)
• "real" vs. fantasized body --> identity = construction
• Sophie Stones = symbolizes heteronormative
• ghost writers interference and identity adaption = symbol of performativity
• failure of normativity

phallic mother?

Patrick Williams - Significant corporeality: bodies and identities in Jackie Kay's fiction

Jeanette King - 'A Woman's A Man For A' That': Jackie Kay's Trumpet

• society = prison which enforces differences
• passing/transcending traditional categories
• penis envy
• labeling (as lesbian) = limitation
• pro-female vs contra-female perception of Joss Moody
• gender = performance
• music = key to border-crossing/gender change
• abandoning of scripts and predecents!
• problem of Joss' "Last Word"
• identity nature = problematic itself (like memory): everything about Joss = artificial!!!
• nurture = outweighing nature
• identity instability
• benefits of "Last Word"
• instable identity = liberating effect

• troubling of Joss' gender identity = transgendered performance
• jazz structure = novel structure
• question of identity
• identity = formed by repeated performances (--> Butler?)
• constructivist idea of autonomy
• vs.
• gender performance of Joss destabilises gender and identity
• yet, gender performance = is only significant/with meaning if it is embodied/corporeal
• Joss' performances = sometimes overdone
• performances need to be fully adapted
• race issue = marginalized in a way
• only Joss' death raises questions of all kinds
• about truth, authenticity, identity, reality
• force of music
• link between Joss and identity

central question

is transgender marginalized in "Trumpet"?

--> Yes AND No

muteness marginalises

invisibility subverts = silence as subversive act!

BUT

(music = stabiliser/way out)