EPA-0323 – Pandrogyne: Breaking Gender and Identity

Abstract

Genesis P-Orridge (an English-artist) and Lady Jaye (an American nurse and also artist married to Genesis) created the term pandrogyne/pandrogeny in order to name their project. They used various modern medical techniques ‘to try and look as much like each other as possible. We are required, over and over again by our process of literally cutting-up our bodies, to create a third, conceptually more precise body, to let go of a lifetime's attachment to the physical logo that we visualise automatically as ‘I’ in our internal dialogue with the SELF’¹, as they say.

Using the work of P-Orridge and Lady Jaye (documentaries, interviews, writings…), Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Beatriz Preciado and our own investigations, we present this ‘case’ as a model to think not only about gender, but also identity as social construction. Against the traditional model of two genders they propose a new gender, beyond male and female, and a strong defence of individuality: ‘every man and woman is a man and woman’².

We consider the potencial of this project to break the binary system of gender and identity, and open a new door in order to understand gender identity disorder not as an illness, but as a way of existence.